March 12, 2018

Trump is unorthodox. Other Presidents would have not immediately accepted a meeting with the North Korean dictator. The conventional wisdom is that this would be elevating Kim Jong Un's status on the world stage. So what? The issue isn't about Un's status . The issue is about peace on the Korean peninsula.

Trump is unconventional. This lets him just do the right thing sometimes without a lot of lawyerly ifs, ases and wherefores preliminarily. If Trump can strike a deal for peace, let his advisors fret and fume. They want the status quo and the status quo is war. Unfortunately for them, Trump as President has a lot of power. They can't rein him in if he doesn't want to be reined in. Just maybe he will actually meet with Un and just maybe they will work out a peace deal. Just maybe Trump will do the right thing.

Just think. Dennis Rodman could be appointed ambassador to North Korea. He seems to be the only American that gets along with Un. Trump is right. The conventional approach has not worked for over half a century. If Trump wants to make peace, let him do it. Whether or not Un's status is elevated is irrelevant. The lawyerly approach is irrelevant.

It's unconscionable that North and South Korea sit there in a state of war because the US invaded. And to what end? What did the US accomplish there? It prevented Chinese communism from taking over the peninsula? You think? We invaded Vietnam for the same reason. That was a debacle. China is now our biggest trading partner. China's influence in the world is on the rise with its Belt and Road initiative. Now we are trading partners with them, by the way, a communist country. The US has fucked up so many times it's unbelievable. I won't even mention the invasion of Iraq. Yes, let's get more women in there as Congress persons. Maybe they will have an unconventional approach as well.

As a final note, the kids are telling the NRA to go fuck themselves. Good for them. We don't have to stand for a country where Wayne LaPierre is the dictator. Let's go the unconventional route for once and create a sane society.

March 10, 2018

Trump agreed to sit down with Kim Jong Un much to the dismay and chagrin of his advisors who say you just can't do that without a lot of preliminary fol de rol. Well, Trump isn't one to do things the conventional way or to go the conventional route. Of course he can always change his mind, but there is a chance that the meeting could go something like this.

Kim Jong Un: You know we never had a peace treaty from the Korean War. Technically, we're still at war. President Moon of South Korea wants to make peace with us

Trump: You know, it's ridiculous that the US has never allowed South Korea to make peace with you. Blame that on all my Democrat predecessors. Obama, Clinton, the whole lot of them. Also the military-industrial complex and the Generals, they never want to make peace. They're in the business of war. Their paycheck is conditional on war. When peace breaks out, they don't get paid.

Kim John Un: Then we're on the same page. We make peace with you. We make peace with President Moon, and finally the Korean War is over and we can get on with our business. We even build Trump hotel in North Korea.

Trump: Yeah, that would be a great first step to cement our friendship. By the way, could you loan my son-in-law, Jared Kushner a few million. He would like to build a few apartments in Korea as well.

KimJong Un: We could work that out. Yea! No more North Korea and South Korea. We are just one united Korea. Just like you. No red states and blue states. Just one United States.

Of course, Trump is unorthodox, but he always defers to those wiser and cooler heads around him that counsel him that you just can't do that. You just can't go and make peace with Kim Jong Un. He's our deadly enemy. You must make him unilaterally disarm first. He must give up his nuclear program. Making peace is not all that simple. There are a lot of whatifs, whereases and non sequiturs involved.

Trump, the deal maker, could pull off one of the biggest deals in history. It could happen, but I'm not holding my breath.

March 06, 2018

Before I turn to Jared Kushner, let me ask: Do you believe the U.S. government does the right thing all or most of the time?

The Gallup organization started asking this question in 1963, when over 70 percent of Americans said they did. Since then, the percent has steadily declined. By 2016, before Trump became president, only 16 percent of Americans agreed.

Why the decline? Surely various disappointments and scandals played a part – Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, “weapons of mass destruction,” the Wall Street bailout.

But the largest factor by far has been the rise of big money in politics. Most people no longer believe their voices count.

That view is backed by solid research. Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University analyzed 1,799 policy issues that came before Congress, and found “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Instead, Gilens and Page concluded, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy individuals and moneyed business interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.

It’s likely far worse now. Gilens and Page’s data came from 1981 to 2002, before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in its Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions.

Trump and Bernie Sanders – authoritarian populist and progressive populist, respectively – based their shockingly successful campaigns on the public’s outrage at the corruption of our democracy by big money. Sanders called for a “political revolution.” Trump promised to “drain the swamp.”

Which brings us to Jared Kushner, the putative swamp-drainer’s son-in-law, and major advisor.

Kushner may yet be indicted in Robert Mueller’s investigation. But it could turn out that Kushner’s most significant contribution to the stench of this administration will come from his financial conflicts of interest.

When he took the White House job, Kushner chose not to follow the usual practice of wealthy people when they join administrations – putting their assets into blind trusts managed by outside experts.

Instead, Kushner retained control over the vast majority of his interest in Kushner Companies, worth as much as $761 million, according to government ethics filings.

So how has Kushner separated his business dealings from his dealings on behalf of the United States? He hasn’t.

The Timesreported last week that after the CEOs of Citigroup and Apollo Global Management attended White House meetings set up by Kushner, the two firms loaned the Kushner family business more than $500 million.

Furthermore, once the loan was received, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped an inquiry of Apollo Global Management.

Last spring, Kushner’s real-estate firm sought hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the Qatar government, for its distressed property on Fifth Avenue, reports the Intercept. Soon after Qatar turned down the request, Kushner supported a diplomatic assault on Qatar that sparked a crisis continuing today.

Kushner is such an easy mark that officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways to manipulate him with financial deals, according to U.S. intelligence.

Kushner insists that he’s done nothing wrong, and there’s no direct evidence he has profited off his position in White House or put personal financial interests ahead of the interests of the American public.

But that’s not the point. Conflicts of interest are always difficult to prove, which is why we have ethics rules to avoid even the appearance of such conflicts.

And it sure looks as if Kushner is using his White House perch to make money for himself, just as is his father-in-law.

It’s as bad for a government official to look as if he’s lining his pockets as for him to actually do so, because the appearance of corruption undermines public trust just as readily as the real thing. And trust is what distinguishes an advanced democracy from a banana republic.

But Trump and the members of his family he’s brought into his White House don’t give a hoot about public trust. They have utter contempt for the common good. Government ethics officials have compared Trump’s administration to a game of whack-a-mole – go after one potential violation, and others pop up.

Perhaps Kushner tells himself that the American public is already so cynical about big money’s takeover of our democracy that his own apparent, or real, conflicts are chicken feed by comparison.

Which may be true. But by adding to the distrust, Kushner is doing his own bit to destroy American democracy – actions almost as treasonous as if he colluded with Russians to make his father-in-law president.

March 05, 2018

Donald Trump once said he identified with Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark in “The Fountainhead,” an architect so upset that a housing project he designed didn’t meet specifications he had it dynamited.

Others in Trump’s circle were influenced by Rand. “Atlas Shrugged” was said to be the favorite book of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state. Rand also had a major influence on Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA chief. Trump’s first nominee for Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder, said he spent much of his free time reading Rand.

The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, required his staff to read Rand.

Uber’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has described himself as a Rand follower. Before he was sacked, he applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values, and even used the cover art for Rand’s book “The Fountainhead” as his Twitter avatar.

Who is Ayn Rand and why does she matter? Ayn Rand – best known for two highly-popular novels still widely read today – “The Fountainhead,” published in 1943, and “Atlas Shrugged,” in 1957 – didn’t believe there was a common good. She wrote that selfishness is a virtue, and altruism is an evil that destroys nations.

When Rand offered these ideas they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the prior half century witnessed our interdependence, through depression and war.

After the war we used our seemingly boundless prosperity to finance all sorts of public goods – schools and universities, a national highway system, and healthcare for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of African-Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women. Of course there was a common good. We were living it.

But then, starting in the late 1970s, Rand’s views gained ground. She became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism.

This utter selfishness, this contempt for the public, this win-at-any-cost mentality is eroding American life.

Without adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, we’re living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most unscrupulous get ahead, and where everyone must be wary in order to survive. This is not a society. It’s not even a civilization, because there’s no civility at its core. It’s a disaster.

In other words, we have to understand who Ayn Rand is so we can reject her philosophy and dedicate ourselves to rebuilding the common good.

The idea of the common good was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare” – not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.”

Yet today you find growing evidence of its loss – CEOs who gouge their customers, loot their corporations and defraud investors. Lawyers and accountants who look the other way when corporate clients play fast and loose, who even collude with them to skirt the law.

Wall Street bankers who defraud customers and investors. Film producers and publicists who choose not to see that a powerful movie mogul they depend on is sexually harassing and abusing young women.

Politicians who take donations (really, bribes) from wealthy donors and corporations to enact laws their patrons want, or shutter the government when they don’t get the partisan results they seek.

And a president of the United States who lies repeatedly about important issues, refuses to put his financial holdings into a blind trust and then personally profits off his office, and foments racial and ethnic conflict.

The common good consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society. A concern for the common good – keeping the common good in mind – is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we’re all in it together.

February 26, 2018

Students staged a “lie-in” outside the White House on Monday to promote gun control reform.Credit Zach Gibson/Getty Images

On Wednesday, after listening to the heart-rending stories of those who lost children and friends in the Parkland school shooting — while holding a cue card with empathetic-sounding phrases — Donald Trump proposed his answer: arming schoolteachers.

It says something about the state of our national discourse that this wasn’t even among the vilest, stupidest reactions to the atrocity. No, those honors go to the assertions by many conservative figures that bereaved students were being manipulated by sinister forces, or even that they were paid actors.

Still, Trump’s horrible idea, taken straight from the N.R.A. playbook, was deeply revealing — and the revelation goes beyond issues of gun control. What’s going on in America right now isn’t just a culture war. It is, on the part of much of today’s right, a war on the very concept of community, of a society that uses the institution we call government to offer certain basic protections to all its members.

Before I get there, let me remind you of the obvious: We know very well how to limit gun violence, and arming civilians isn’t part of the answer.

No other advanced nation experiences frequent massacres the way we do. Why? Because they impose background checks for prospective gun owners, limit the prevalence of guns in general and ban assault weapons that allow a killer to shoot dozens of people before he (it’s always a he) can be taken down. And yes, these regulations work.

February 20, 2018

First, you can complain. Yell. Bang on the dinner table. Tell your family and friends the man is a dangerous fool. Explode every time you read something about him. Swear every time you see him on TV. Go ballistic when you listen to him or about him on the radio.

Complaining may feel good, but it won’t help.

Your second choice: You can bury your head in the sand. Pretend he’s not there. Stop reading the news. Turn off the TV and radio. No longer visit political Internet sites. When family or friends bring up his name, change the subject.

Burying your head in the sand may also feel good, but it certainly won’t help, either.

You have a third choice. You can get active, and make it harder for Trump to damage America. This coming November 6, 34 senate seats, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, and 36 governorships will be up for election or re-election.

Support primary candidates who will resist Trump. Mobilize to get out the vote. Organize so that November 6 becomes a total repudiation of Donald Trump and all he stands for.

Start right now. Find an Indivisible group near you. Go Indivisible.org and become part of the solution. If you’re already in a blue state and want to reach out to purple or red parts of the country, visit swingleft.org or sisterdistrict.com.

February 10, 2018

Trump brought up the matter of "shithole countries," countries from which he didn't want to accept immigrants presumably because they were so poor, backward and uneducated. Then there's the matter of hellhole countries, those countries destroyed by American bombs and weaponry, destruction that was set off by George W Bush's invasion of Iraq based on a lie. Sure, now other entities are fighting in the Middle East like al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, ISIS. They are all using American made weapons. Our defense contractors don't care who uses their weapons as long as they get get more product out the door. The more fighting that goes on, the more the military-industrial complex prospers.

Right now in Mosul thousands of children can't get medical treatment because of the infrastructure that has been destroyed. That area is surely a hellhole, if not a shithole. By definition a hellhole country is a country destroyed by the US military or its weaponry. "400,000 children still displaced from Mosul fighting," read the headline in a Reuters report dated October 15, 2017. The report continued:

“Just because the fighting in Mosul has stopped doesn’t mean the humanitarian needs aren’t great. If anything, children need our help now more than ever - those that are still displaced and those that are returning to see what’s left of their homes,” said the London-based charity’s Iraq country director, Ana Locsin.

“Large parts of Mosul have been reduced to rubble; schools, homes, hospitals, roads, playgrounds and parks. I’ve spoken to dozens of children haunted by their experiences, left with psychological scars that’ll take years to heal,” Locsin said in a statement.

What responsibility does the US have to the vast number of children whose homes, playgrounds and schools have been destroyed? Is it to let them immigrate to the US? I don't think so. However, the US does have a responsibility to rebuild the homes and infrastructure that have been destroyed on account of US meddling and destruction of their neighborhoods. So what is the response? $165 billion more to the military a few days ago. Nothing for the Peace Corps or any agency that has any responsibility to rebuild the areas destroyed by the US military. US military efforts have for the most part only succeeded in destroying the lives of civilians including women and old people. Hospitals have been destroyed. Schools have been destroyed. Any humanitarian efforts have been destroyed.

And what is the US response to that? $165 billion more for the military with nary a whisper of dissent. Not one critical comment from the US media. Not one penny for the Peace Corps or any US agency that might rebuild Iraq. Does one even exist? That's why American citizens need the international media here in order to get some perspective on this all out attack on civilization being carried out in their name. Instead, the drumbeat of war keeps rumbling ahead.

February 09, 2018

Trump’s promise that corporations will use his giant new tax cut to make new investments and raise workers’ wages is proving to be about as truthful as his promise to release his tax returns.

The results are coming in, and guess what? Almost all the extra money is going into stock buybacks. Since the tax cut became law, buy-backs have surged to $88.6 billion. That’s more than double the amount of buybacks in the same period last year, according to data provided by Birinyi Associates.

Compare this to the paltry $2.5 billion of employee bonuses corporations say they’ll dispense in response to the tax law, and you see the bonuses for what they are – a small fig leaf to disguise the big buybacks.

If anything, the current tumult in the stock market will fuel even more buybacks.

Stock buybacks are corporate purchases of their own shares of stock. Corporations do this to artificially prop up their share prices.

Buybacks are the corporate equivalent of steroids. They may make shareholders feel better than otherwise, but nothing really changes.

Money spent on buybacks isn’t reinvested in new equipment, research, or factories. Buybacks don’t add jobs or raise wages. They don’t increase productivity. They don’t grow the American economy.

Yet CEOs love buybacks because most CEO pay is now in shares of stock and stock options rather than cash. So when share prices go up, executives reap a bonanza.

At the same time, the value of CEO pay from previous years also rises, in what amounts to a retroactive (and off the books) pay increase – on top of their already humongous compensation packages.

Buybacks used to be illegal. The Securities and Exchange considered them unlawful means of manipulating stock prices, in violation of the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934.

In those days, the typical corporation put about half its profits into research and development, plant and equipment, worker retraining, additional jobs, and higher wages.

But under Ronald Reagan, who rhapsodized about the “magic of the market,” the SEC legalized buybacks.

After that, buybacks took off. Just in the past decade, 94 percent of corporate profits have been devoted to buybacks and dividends, according to researchers at the Academic-Industry Research Network.

Last year, big American corporations spent a record $780 billion buying back their shares of stock.

And that was before the new tax law.

Put another way, the new tax law is giving America’s wealthy not one but two big windfalls: They stand to gain the most from the tax cuts for individuals, and they’re the big winners from the tax cuts for corporations.

This isn’t just unfair. It’s also bad for the economy as a whole. Corporations don’t invest because they get tax cuts. They invest because they expect that customers will buy more of their goods and services.

This brings us to the underlying problem. Companies haven’t been investing – and have been using their profits to buy back their stock instead – because they doubt their investments will pay off in additional sales.

That’s because most economic gains have been going to the wealthy, and the wealthy spend a far smaller percent of their income than the middle class and the poor. When most gains go to the top, there’s not enough demand to justify a lot of new investment.

Which also means that as long as public policies are tilted to the benefit of those at the top – as is Trump’s tax cut, along with Reagan’s legalization of stock buybacks – we’re not going to see much economic growth.

February 08, 2018

Trump to global CEOs and financiers in Davos, Switzerland: “America is open for business.” We’re now a great place for you to make money. We’ve slashed taxes and regulations so you can make a bundle here.

Trump to ambitious young immigrants around the world, including those brought here as children: America is closed. We don’t want you. Forget that poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty about bringing us your poor yearning to breathe free. Don’t even try.

In Trump’s America, global capital is welcome, people aren’t.

Well, I have news for the so-called businessman. America was built by ambitious people from all over the world, not by global capital.

Global capital wants just one thing: A high return on its investment.

Global capital has no obligation to any country or community. If there’s another place around the world where taxes are lower and regulations laxer, global capital will move there at the speed of an electronic blip.

Global capital doesn’t care how it gets a high return. If it can get it by slashing wages, outsourcing to contract workers, polluting air and water, defrauding investors, or destroying communities, it will.

People are different. Once they’ve rooted somewhere, they generally stay put. They develop webs of connections and loyalties.

If they’re ambitious – and, let’s face it, the one characteristic that almost all immigrants to America have shared for more than two centuries is ambition – they develop skills, educate their kids, and contribute to their communities and their nation.

My great grandfather arrived in America from Ukraine. He was nineteen years old and penniless. What brought him here was his ambition. He built a business. He started a family.

Then he invited his brothers and sisters from Ukraine to join him. He put them up in his home and gave them some of his savings to start their own lives as Americans.

You may call it “chain migration,” Mr. Trump, but we used to call it “family reunification.” We believed it wasn’t just humane to allow members from abroad to join their loved ones here, but also good for the America. It made the nation stronger and more prosperous.

By the way, Mr. Trump, global capital doesn’t create jobs. Jobs are created when customers want more goods and services. Nobody invests in a business unless they expect consumers to buy what that business will produce. Those consumers include immigrants.

Consumers are also workers. The more productive they are and the better they’re paid, the more goods and services they buy – creating a virtuous circle of higher wages and more jobs.

They become more productive and better paid when they have access to good schools and universities, good health care, and well-maintained transportation systems linking them together.

This combination – people rooted in families and communities, supplemented by ambitious young immigrants, all aided by good education and infrastructure – made America the economic powerhouse it is today.

Along the way, regulations proved to be necessary guardrails. We protected the environment, prevented fraud, and tried to stop financial entities from gambling away everyone’s savings, because we came to see that capitalism without such guardrails is a mudslide.

We didn’t accomplish what we’ve achieved by cutting taxes and slashing regulations so global investors could make more money in America, while preventing ambitious immigrants from coming to our shores.

We raised taxes – especially on big corporations and wealthy individuals – in order to finance good schools, public universities, and infrastructure. We regulated business. And we welcomed immigrants and reunited families.

Global capital came our way not because we were a cheap place to do business but because we were fabulously productive and innovative place to do business.

Now Trump and his rich backers want to undo all this. No one should be surprised. When they look at the economy they only see money. They’ve made lots of it.

But the real economy is people. America should be open to ambitious people even if they’re dirt poor, like my great grandfather. It should also be open to their relations, whose family members here will give them a start.

It should invest in people, as it once did.

America didn’t become great by global capital seeking higher returns but by people from all over world seeking better lives. And global capital won’t make it great again.

February 07, 2018

Public Citizen's brief connects the dots, documenting with concise, easy-to-grasp specifics how Trump the faux populist has systematically sold out the working families whose votes he cynically swiped, handing our government to a kakistocracy of corporate plutocrats.

"Sure enough, Trump and his crew of voracious corporate plutocrats are gorging themselves on new rules that further enrich America's already-rich elites at our expense." (Photo: Screenshot/Public Citizen)

Why does Donald Trump constantly preface his outlandish lies with such phrases as: "To be honest with you," "To tell the truth" and "Believe me"?

Because even he knows that as a lifelong con-man, his voice takes on the tone of a snake-oil salesman when he starts exaggerating and prevaricating, so he reflexively tries to puff up his credibility with an extra dose of bluster: "No really, trust me, I never lie..." In fact, just in the past year, Trump's documented whoppers rank him as the lyingest president in U.S. history. And that included Nixon!

It's not the volume of his fabrications that is so gross, but their enormity. Most damnable of all has been his masquerading as a golden-haired billionaire "populist" who's standing up for America's hard-hit middle class against Wall Street, corporate lobbyists and moneyed elites — a carefully crafted PR pose that has duped many working stiffs into thinking he is their champion.

Even before he was sworn in last year, President Trump stripped off the populist garments he wore during his campaign and publicly bared his naked plutocratic essence by naming bankster Gary Cohn to be his top economic advisor.

Cohn is one of five top economic officials our fake populist president brought into his government from just one of Wall Street's most abusive banks, Goldman Sachs. How many officials did he add to bring such legitimate voices as consumers, workers, and poor people to his policy making table? Zero.

So, since if we don't have a seat at the table, we're on the menu! Sure enough, Trump and his crew of voracious corporate plutocrats are gorging themselves on new rules that further enrich America's already-rich elites at our expense. For example, they're reducing penalties for Wall Street fraud and gouging; eliminating the requirement that firms advising us on where to invest our savings have to act in our best interests, rather than their own; loosening the few protections we have against predatory lenders; raising the number of temporary, low-wage foreign workers that corporations can bring in to take our jobs; scrapping a rule requiring corporate giants to report their unequal pay to women; opening up Social Security to cuts and privatization; limiting fines on nursing home negligence that harm or even kill residents; eliminating funds for low-income heating and programs to protect kids from lead paint; repealing fracking rules that protect water and air quality; allowing for-profit, private colleges to gouge students; ending funding that provides legal services for poor people; and raising entrance fees at our national parks

These are just a few of Trump & Company's ongoing rush-rush and hush-hush assaults on our rights, protections and basic needs — all orchestrated to free a tiny minority of moneyed powers to run roughshod over the great majority of Americans.

That's why a new, straight-talking pamphlet by the watchdog group, public Citizen, is so important. It starts with Trump's declaration if his inaugural address last year that, "The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer." Then it shows that he immediately abandoned any pretense of populist principles, proceeding from day one to further enrich and empower the same multinational corporations and mega-rich elites he had denounced as a candidate. While there have been multiple news reports throughout the past year about this action or that by Trump Incorporated, Public Citizen's brief connects the dots, documenting with concise, easy-to-grasp specifics how Trump the faux populist has systematically sold out the working families whose votes he cynically swiped, handing our government to a kakistocracy of corporate plutocrats. It's not merely that he's an irredeemable liar, but that Trump himself is a lie.

The Public Citizen expose, titled "Forgetting the Forgotten: 101 Ways Donald Trump Has Betrayed His Populist Agenda," drives the stake of truth through the heart of his populist lie. It should not just be read, but used like a Thomas Paine pamphlet to spread the truth. To download a free copy, go to CorporatePresidency.org/forgotten.

Trump supporters seem to rationalize that, because Trump is a billionaire, he's not in it for the money like a lot of politicians who succumb to lobbyists' pleas in return for campaign contributions, jobs when they leave office etc. But when has a billionaire ever been content that they have enough money and can devote themselves to public service? Certainly not Trump. I think he sees the Presidency as a fantastic financial opportunity, but not on the petty scale that Congressmen aspire to. No, he's got his sights set on doing deals for himself and his family all over the world - Russia and Israel in particular.

Why else is he sending Jared Kushner all over meeting with Russians and Israelis. Israel has already given Kushner millions for his flagging businesses. Kushner's company received a $30 million investment from one of Israel’s largest financial institutions, Menora Mivtachim. Tit for Tat, Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalen recognizing that city as Israel's capital much to the chagrin of every other nation on earth especially the Palestinians. According to the New York Times, "The business dealings don’t appear to violate federal ethics laws, which require Mr. Kushner to recuse himself only from narrow government decisions that would have a “direct and predictable effect” on his financial interests." Of course not. Federal ethics laws never anticipated a President and his family doing deals all over the world.

The biggest deal he's done so far for the Trump empire is cutting taxes for the wealthy. Trump wouldn't do a deal that was good for America if it were not good for him personally. He means to come out of this stint as the President wealthier than ever. Gone are the days when Presidents put their assets in a blind trust. That's not for Trump. Ha. Ha. He has his whole family out there doing deals that may or may not benefit the pitiful Trump voter, but they sure will benefit him and his family. After all he's a follower of Herbert Spencer and Ayn Rand. It's survival of the fittest, baby, and devil take the hindermost.

When all is said and done with the Mueller investigation, I think what they'll find out is that Trump was not colluding with Russia in some nefarious way to undermine the US government. He was simply colluding with Russia to do a business deal that would make the Trump empire richer than ever.

February 06, 2018

If Robert Mueller finds that Trump colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election, or even if Trump fires Mueller before he makes such a finding, Trump’s supporters will protect Trump from any political fallout.

Trump’s base will stand by him not because they believe Trump is on their side, but because they define themselves as being on his side.

Trump has intentionally cleaved America into two warring camps: pro-Trump and anti-Trump. And he has convinced the pro-Trumps that his enemy is their enemy.

Most Americans are not passionate conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats. But they have become impassioned Trump supporters or Trump haters.

Polls say 37 percent of Americans approve of him, and most disapprove. These numbers are the tips of two vast icebergs of intensity.

Trump has forced all of us to take sides, and to despise those on the other. There’s no middle ground.

The Republican Party used to stand for fiscal responsibility, state’s rights, free trade, and a hard line against Russian aggression. Now it just stands for Trump.

Pro-Trump Republicans remain the majority in the GOP. As long as Trump can keep them riled up, and as long as Republicans remain in control of at least one chamber of Congress, he’s safe.

“Try to impeach him, just try it,” Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser, warned last summer. “You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.”

That’s probably an exaggeration, but Trump (with the assistance of his enablers in Congress) has convinced his followers that the Russian investigation is part of a giant conspiracy to unseat him, and that his enemies want to replace him with someone who will allow dangerous forces to overrun America.

Sure, this paranoia is based on the same racism and xenophobia that has smoldered in America since its inception. Trump’s strategy is to stoke it daily.

Sure, American politics had polarized before Trump. Trump’s strategy is to exploit and enlarge these divisions.

A few months ago I traveled to Kentucky and talked with a number of Trump supporters.

They looked and sounded nothing like traditional conservative Republicans. Most were working class. Several were members of labor unions. All were passionate about Trump.

Why do you support him? I asked. “He’s shaking Washington up,” was the typical response.

I mentioned his lies. “He’s telling it like it is,” several told me. “He speaks his mind.”

I talked about his attacks on democracy. “Every other politician is on the take,” they said. “He isn’t. He doesn’t need their money.”

I asked about his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. They told me they didn’t believe a word of it. “It’s a plot to get rid of him.”

By making himself the center of an intensifying conflict, Trump grabs all the attention and fuels even greater passions on both sides.

It’s what he did in the 2016 election, but on a far larger scale. Then, he sucked all the oxygen out of the race by making himself its biggest story. Now, he’s sucking all the oxygen out of America by making himself our national obsession.

Trump received more coverage in the 2016 election than any presidential candidate in American history. Hillary Clinton got far less, and what she got was almost all about her emails.

Schooled in reality television and New York tabloids, Trump knows how to keep both sides stirred up: Vilify, disparage, denounce, defame, and accuse the other side of conspiring against America. Do it continuously. Dominate every news cycle.

Fox News is his propaganda arm, magnifying his tweets, rallies, and lies. The rest of the media also plays into Trump’s strategy by making him the defining controversy of America. Every particular dispute – DACA, the “wall,” North Korea, Mueller’s investigation, and so on – becomes another aspect of the larger national war over Trump.

It’s the divide-and-conquer strategy of a tyrant.

Democracies require sufficient social trust that citizens regard the views of those they disagree with as worthy of equal consideration to their own. That way, they’ll accept political outcomes they dislike.

Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is to destroy that trust.

So if Mueller finds Trump colluded with Russia, or Trump fires Mueller before Mueller makes such a finding, the pro-Trumps will block any consequential challenge to his authority.

February 05, 2018

"Conservatives even tend to believe that inequality is part of the natural order, and that any attempt to change it is senseless." (Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr/cc)

It's incomprehensible to many of us that people could support a president who, in Bernie Sanders' words, "is compulsively dishonest, who is a bully, who actively represents the interests of the billionaire class, who is anti-science, and who is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, our gender, or our sexual orientation."

Based on various trusted sources and a dab of cognitive science, it's fair to conclude that there are three main reasons for this unlikely phenomenon.

1. Trump's Followers Believe They're Better Than Other People

Nationalism, exceptionalism, narcissism, racism. They're all part of the big picture, although it's unfair to simply dismiss Trump people as ignorant racists. Many of them are well-educated and wealthy. But well-to-do individuals tend to feel entitled, superior, uninterested in the people 'beneath' them, and less willing to support the needs of society. Thus many wealthy white Americans are just fine with Trump's disdain for the general population.

Poorer whites also feel superior, in the sense that they're reluctant to give up their long-time self-assigned position at the top of the racial hierarchy.

Trump and the Republicans don't seem to care at all about poor people, especially people of color. It's nearly beyond belief that they'd allow a father to be torn away from his family after living in the U.S. for 30 years; that they'd allow tens of thousands of Americans to sleep outside in subzero weather; or that they'd ignore the women and children being blown up by our bombs in Yemen.

2. They're Driven by Hatred for Their Perceived Enemies

According to an ancient proverb, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." For many besieged Americans, the friend is Donald Trump, the enemy of his followers' enemies, based on his belligerent put-downs of so many target groups that have been recklessly blamed for America's problems. He's been against a 'lying' media, 'job-stealing' immigrants, 'business-stifling' environmentalists, 'elites' like Hillary Clinton who are thought to look down on struggling middle-class whites, and the LGBTQ community and pro-abortion groups, who threaten the religious right's 'traditional' values to a point they consider much worse than Trump's moral depravity.

Their greatest enemy may be the traditional politician, who has allowed the middle class to falter. Trump is unconventional, different from anyone before him. As long as their president is disrupting the status quo, change is happening, and any change, his supporters believe, is likely to defeat one or more of their enemies.

3. They Refuse to Admit They Were Wrong

In fact, the more they're proven wrong the stronger their resolve. This is called cognitive dissonance. It's common for conservatives to construct their personal beliefs on a moral basis, to adhere to them in the face of any controversy, and if necessary to reshape the evidence to fit these beliefs. Many conservatives continue to fall for Trump's hyperbole about a 'booming' economy and new jobs and better times to come.

Conservatives even tend to believe that inequality is part of the natural order, and that any attempt to change it is senseless. Cognitive dissonance kicks in for them when they are confronted with the overwhelming evidence for a collapsing middle class. Rather than re-evaluating their beliefs, they go to the other extreme and defend the widening fracture in U.S. society as a natural consequence of an imagined meritocracy. Incredibly, according to one poll, in 2014 only 5 percent of the U.S. population believed that the government should be addressing inequality.

So Now What?

In his rebuttal to Donald Trump's State of the Union address, Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA) said, "This administration isn't just targeting the laws that protect us — they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection."

..that we are all worthy of protection. That will only happen with a progressive candidate who believes that a strong society makes successful individuals, not the other way around.

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February 03, 2018

1. He told you he’d cut your taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. You bought it. But his new tax law does the opposite. By 2027, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the richest 1 percent will have got 83 percent of the tax cut and the richest 0.1 percent, 60 percent of it. But more than half of all Americans — 53 percent — will pay more in taxes. As Trump told his wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago just days after the tax bill became law, “You all just got a lot richer.”

2. He promised to close “special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors but unfair to American workers,” especially the notorious “carried interest” loophole for private-equity, hedge fund, and real estate partners. You bought it. But the new tax law keeps the “carried interest” loophole.

3. He told you he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “beautiful.” You bought it. But he didn’t repeal and he didn’t replace. (Just as well: His plan would have knocked at least 23 million Americans off health insurance, including many of you.) Instead, he’s doing what he can to cut it back and replace it with nothing. The new tax law will result in 13 million people losing health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

4. He told you he’d invest $1 trillion in our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. You bought it. But after his giant tax cut for corporations and millionaires, there’s no money left for infrastructure.

5. He said he’d drain the Washington swamp. You bought it. But he’s brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses, and he’s filled departments and agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who are crafting new policies for the same industries they recently worked for.

6. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. But he has created the most dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, and has already fired and replaced so many assistants (one of them hired and fired in a little more than a week) that people there barely know who’s in charge of what.

7. He told you he’d “bring down drug prices” by making deals with drug companies. You bought it. But now the White House says that promise is “inoperative.”

8. He told you he’d “stop foreign lobbyists from raising money for American elections.” You bought it. But foreign lobbyists are still raising money for American elections.

9. He told you “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” You bought it. But he and House Speaker Paul Ryan are already planning such cuts in order to deal with the ballooning deficit created, in part, by the new tax law for corporations and the rich.

10. He promised “six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” You bought it. But the giant tax cut for corporations and the rich doesn’t leave any money for this.

11. He said that on Day One he’d label China a “currency manipulator.” You bought it. But then he met with China’s president Xi Jinping and declared “China is not a currency manipulator.” Ever since then, Trump has been cozying up to Xi.

12. He said he “won’t bomb Syria.” You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.

13. He said he’d build a “wall” across the southern border. You believed him. But chief of staff John Kelly says it is “unlikely that we will build a wall, a physical barrier, from sea to shining sea.”

14. He promised that the many women who accused him of sexual misconduct “will be sued after the election is over.” You bought it. He hasn’t sued them, presumably because he doesn’t want the truth to come out.

15. He said he would not be a president who took vacations, and he called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief.” You bought it. But since becoming President he has spent nearly 25 percent of his days at one of his golf properties for some portion of the day, according to Golf News Network, at a cost to taxpayers of over $77 million. That’s already more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama cost in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.

16. He said he’d force companies to keep jobs in America, and that there would be “consequences” for companies that shipped jobs abroad. You believed him. But despite their promises, Carrier, Ford, GM, and the rest have continued to ship jobs to Mexico and China. Carrier (a division of United Technologies) has moved ahead with plans to send 1,000 jobs at its Indiana plant to Mexico. Notwithstanding, the federal government has rewarded United Technologies with 15 new contracts since Trump’s inauguration. GE is sending jobs to Canada. IBM is sending them to Costa Rica, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil. There have been no “consequences” for sending all these jobs overseas.

17. He promised to revive the struggling coal industry and “bring back thousands” of lost mining jobs. You bought it. But coal jobs continue to disappear. Since Trump’s victory, at least 6 plants that relied on coal have closed or announced they will close. Another 40 are projected to close during the president’s four-year term. Utilities continue to switch to natural gas instead of coal, and renewable energy is cheaper than ever.

18. He promised to protect steel workers. But according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, which tracks shipments, steel imports were 19.4 percent higher in the first 10 months of 2017 than in the same period last year. That import surge has hurt American steel workers, who were already struggling against a glut of cheap Chinese steel.

19. He said he’d make America safer. You believed him. But according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 377 mass shootings so far in the Trump administration, including 58 people killed and hundreds injured at a concert in Las Vegas, and 26 churchgoers killed and 20 injured at a church in Texas. Trump refuses to consider any gun control legislation.

20. He said he’d release his taxes. “I’m under a routine audit and it’ll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished it will be released,“ he promised during the campaign. He hasn’t released his taxes.

January 31, 2018

Following President Donald Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a response.

"I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to Trump's State of the Union speech," Sanders announced. "But I also want to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, Trump chose not to discuss."

And, he added, "I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty, and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year."

Watch:

The complete text of Sanders' prepared remarks follow:

Good evening. Thanks for joining us.

Tonight, I want to take a few minutes of your time to respond to President Trump’s State of the Union speech. But I want to do more than just that. I want to talk to you about the major crises facing our country that, regrettably, President Trump chose not to discuss. I want to talk to you about the lies that he told during his campaign and the promises he made to working people which he did not keep.

Finally, I want to offer a vision of where we should go as a nation which is far different than the divisiveness, dishonesty, and racism coming from the Trump Administration over the past year.

President Trump talked tonight about the strength of our economy. Well, he’s right. Official unemployment today is 4.1 percent which is the lowest it has been in years and the stock market in recent months has soared. That’s the good news.

But what President Trump failed to mention is that his first year in office marked the lowest level of job creation since 2010. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 254,000 fewer jobs were created in Trump’s first 11 months in office than were created in the 11 months before he entered office.

Further, when we talk about the economy, what’s most important is to understand what is happening to the average worker. And here’s the story that Trump failed to mention tonight.

Over the last year, after adjusting for inflation, the average worker in America saw a wage increase of, are you ready for this, 4 cents an hour, or 0.17%. Or, to put it in a different way, that worker received a raise of a little more than $1.60 a week. And, as is often the case, that tiny wage increase disappeared as a result of soaring health care costs.

Meanwhile, at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the rich continue to get much richer while millions of American workers are working two or three jobs just to keep their heads above water. Since March of last year, the three richest people in America saw their wealth increase by more than $68 billion. Three people. A $68 billion increase in wealth. Meanwhile, the average worker saw an increase of 4 cents an hour.

January 28, 2018

Four-year-old Hawra Alaa Hassan was badly burned in a U.S. airstrike in Mosul, Iraq, in 2017. (Felipe Dana / AP)

The greatest impact of Donald Trump’s first year as president has been kept out of sight from most Americans. The wars the U.S. waged during Barack Obama’s tenure have sharply escalated under Trump. The result has been a predictable and massive spike in civilian deaths.

Boasting in an interview last year about an apparent retreat by Islamic State, Trump declared, “I totally changed rules of engagement. I totally changed our military.” He also touted the “big, big difference if you look at the military now” compared with what it was under the Obama administration. While Obama shares blame for escalating the use of drones, especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, Trump’s military leadership appears to be a return to a more traditional form of war and a complete unfettering of attempts to minimize civilian casualties.

This unfettering is evident in an almost 50 percent increase of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria during Trump’s first year in office, leading to a rise in civilian deaths by more than 200 percent compared with the year before. The watchdog group Airwars, which has tracked the U.S. war against Islamic State since 2014, remarked, “This unprecedented death toll coincided with the start of the Trump presidency, and suggested in part that policies aimed at protecting civilians had been scaled back under the new administration.” Another analysis by the U.K. organization Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) found that civilian deaths from explosive weapons in Iraq, Syria and Yemen increased by 42 percent in 2017. The group explained that the bigger death toll was largely due to “a massive increase in deadly airstrikes.” While AOAV did not single out the United States, in light of the U.S.’ overt escalation of the wars in those countries, a large proportion of the civilian deaths were likely a result of the new military strategy under Trump.

In addition to Syria and Iraq, U.S. military action in Afghanistan also has dramatically increased. As the Los Angeles Times reported in December: “Operating under looser restrictions on air power that commanders hope will break a stalemate in the war, U.S. fighter planes this year dropped 3,554 explosives in Afghanistan through Oct. 31, the most since 2012.” In December, when the U.S. was expected to slow down for the winter, as it had in the past, it instead continued a steady pace of airstrikes aimed at the Taliban. According to The Washington Post, “For the first time in 16 years, the cold has not slowed the war in the air. U.S. and Afghan forces conducted 455 airstrikes in December, an average of 15 a day, compared with just 65 the year before.”

Unsurprisingly, more civilians were killed last year in Afghanistan, compared with the last year of Obama’s tenure. The United Nations estimates that Afghan civilian deaths from airstrikes were more than 50 percent higher in the first nine months of 2017, compared with the same period a year earlier. The Trump administration also has approved the increase of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with the grand total expected to be close to 15,000. The longest war the U.S. has ever waged appears to have no end in sight.

January 26, 2018

If Trump Wants to Put America First, Why is He Spending a Trillion Dollars on a Military-Industrial Complex Whose Main Purpose is to Protect Other Countries?

by John Lawrence

There are a thousand US military bases around the world to protect our allies who have practically no military bases. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined. According to Politico, maintaining bases and troops overseas cost $85 to $100 billion in fiscal year 2014; the total with bases and troops in warzones is $160 to $200 billion. That's $200 billion that could be spent here at home putting America first. Instead, we protect every tinhorn dictatorship in the world and fight losing wars that go on for decades. Trump's got his head up his ass because he's not putting America first. He's maintaining a global military presence in almost every country in the world and the US public is paying for it. It's nuts.

Even the Democrats, other than Bernie Sanders, want to maintain this status quo. That's what Hillary was all about. She thought she had to build and maintain her hawk cred. She had to be tougher than any man because she was a woman. She voted for the Iraq war. Bernie Sanders didn't. Putting America first would mean taking all that money spent on tinhorn dictatorships and spending it here at home building and maintaining infrastructure. It would mean building affordable housing to house the homeless. It would mean Medicare for all. It would mean free public education from preschool up through the university level.

So Trump's basically a fraud. He's all talk and no action when it comes to putting America first. Does he mean putting the US military-industrial complex first or putting the American people first? And why do we give rich countries like Israel almost $4 billion a year? They are not lacking in funds. According to the Atlantic in 2016:

The United States and Israel have made it official: The two countries signed a new 10-year military-assistance deal on Wednesday, representing the single largest pledge of its kind in American history. The pact, laid out in a Memorandum of Understanding, will be worth $38 billion over the course of a decade, an increase of roughly 27 percent on the money pledged in the last agreement, which was signed in 2007. The diplomatic and military alliance between the two countries is longstanding: Even prior to this week, Israel was, according to the Congressional Research Service, “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.”

The money spent on foreign aid to rich countries could be much better spent on building infrastructure in poor countries like the countries in which the US has bombed and destroyed infrastructure and private homes and businesses. That's how you win friends in the world, but the US millitary-industrial complex and now Trump don't want peace in the world. That would be bad for business. US defense contractors are making a fortune so they like things just the way they are. They like a polarized world in which we and our allies line up on one side and Russia, Iran, China and their allies line up on the other. This approach to world affairs guarantees large profits for Lockheed, Boeing, Northrup Grumman and their satellites.

World peace would not only be bad for business. It would result in massive unemployment. So maintaining a continuous war footing is the solution.

Anti-capitalist and anti-Trump protesters took to the streets across Switzerland ahead of the U.S. president's expected arrival on Friday. (Photo: Tasnim News Agency/cc)

Ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's arrival at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, thousands of anti-Trump protesters took to the streets across Switzerland, decrying racism, sexism, capitalism, and dirty energy practices.

"We are protesting against both Trump and the WEF," Young Socialists of Switzerland president Tamara Funiciello toldThe Local, denouncing the U.S. president as well as the meeting that brings together businessmen and world leaders from across the globe.

"The discussions between the richest one percent of the world and a man who fuels an aggressive atmosphere towards women and minorities," Funiciello added, "has no place in Switzerland."

Thousands of people marched in Zurich while hundreds descended on Geneva, Lausanne, and Fribourg. Their signs declared: "Trump Not Welcome"; "Switzerland Is Hosting Nazis"; "World Economic Fiasco"; "Racist Sexist Capitalist"; "Don't Touch Women's Rights"; "There Is No Planet B"; and "No Trump, No Coal, No Gas, No Fossil Fuels."

Despite patrols by thousands of Swiss soldiers and a ban on protesting in Davos, where the meeting is being held, Reuters reports that on Tuesday, "About 20 demonstrators broke through security to reach the Davos Congress Centre, holding banners and shouting 'Wipe out WEF' before they were peacefully disbanded by police."

"Trump is just one of the other people we disagree with. We've been protesting every year now against the World Economic Forum and if Trump comes or not we don't care," one protester in Davos, Alex Hedinger, told Reuters. "Trump is just, maybe he's just the best symbol of this world."

The U.S. president and several of his cabinet members are expected to arrive Friday, the final day of the WEF meeting, and Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech that White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said will bring the "America First" message to the world stage.

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Since The Repubs and the Dems kicked the can down the road on immigration, there's another government shutdown scheduled for less than three weeks. MItch McConnell is going to bring it to the floor. Big deal. It'll never pass because the Repubs don't want it to pass. So there will be another government shutdown while Chuck Schumer tries to deal with the Dealer-in-Chief who don't wanna maka da deal. If he done wanna maka da deal, Chuck Schumer will be running around in circles trying to make an irrational guy be rational.

Trump wants to send the Dreamers home so they can dream in their native lands. He loves the Dreamers and he will love them even more when they are safely home in Mexico on the other side of the Great Wall. After the next government shutdown the twitter sphere will be all lit up with twitters about how the Dems are making our poor military fighting men and women suffer by not paying them while forcing them into battle. Their wives and Mums will not even get their $100, 000. death bonus after they're shot down by the Taliban.

Will the Dems go to the mat for the Dreamers while the Repub propaganda machine grinds out the alternate facts about how the Dems are hurting our fighting men and women? And the Statue of Liberty will be closed. That great symbol of the free and the brave will only be able to be seen from afar. You will have to blow kisses at it instead of stepping right up and hugging it. Park rangers will be furloughed. It'll be terrible. All the while the Dems championing of the Dreamers will be pitted against the Repubs standing tall for our military.

When it's over, the Dreamers will be left twisting in the wind which has always been Trump's intention no matter how much he loves them. It has always been the Repubs' intention as well. Hidden up Mitch McConnell's sleeve is the so-called nuclear option by which is meant he will change the rules of the Senate to eliminate the filibuster for just this one vote. Of course, the Dems will not be able to do that when they have a majority. McConnell did it once to get Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court. He'll do it again with impunity guaranteeing a vote that opens the government without resolving the Dreamer crisis. After that the deportations of the Dreamers will begin.

January 22, 2018

America has never had a president as deeply unpopular at this stage of his presidency, or one who has sucked up more political oxygen. This isn’t good news for the Republican Party this November or in the future, because the GOP has sold its soul to Trump.

Three principles once gave the GOP its identity and mission: Shrink the deficit, defend states’ rights, and be tough on Russia.

Now, after a year with the raving man-child who now occupies the White House, the Republican Party has taken a giant U-turn. Budget deficits are dandy, state’s rights are obsolete, and Russian aggression is no big deal.

By embracing a man whose only principles are winning and getting even, the Republican Party no longer stands for anything other than Trump.

Start with fiscal responsibility.

When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $5.6 trillion budget surplus over 10 years. Yet even this propitious outlook didn’t stop several Republicans from arguing against the Bush tax cut out of concern it would increase the nation’s debt.

A few years later, congressional Republicans were apoplectic about Obama’s spending plan, necessitated by the 2008 financial crisis. Almost every Republican in Congress opposed it. They argued it would dangerously increase in the federal debt.

“Yesterday the Senate cast one of the most expensive votes in history,” intoned Senator Mitch McConnell. “Americans are wondering how we’re going to pay for all this.” Paul Ryan warned the nation was “heading for a debt crisis.”

Now, with America’s debt at the highest level since shortly after World War II – 77 percent of GDP – Trump and the GOP have enacted a tax law that by their own estimates will increase the debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the decade.

What happened to fiscal responsibility? McConnell, Ryan, and the rest of the GOP have gone mum about it. Politics came first: They and Trump had to enact the big tax cut in order to reward their wealthy patrons.

States’ rights used to be the second pillar of Republican thought.

For decades, Republicans argued that the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment protected the states from federal intermeddling.

They used states’ rights to resist desegregation; to oppose federal legislation protecting workers, consumers, and the environment; and to battle federal attempts to guarantee marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

When, in 2013, the Supreme Court relied on states’ rights to strike down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, then-Senator Jeff Sessions broke out the champagne. “good news!“ said the GOP’s leading advocate of states’ rights. =

But after a year of Trump, Republicans have come around to thinking states have few if any rights.

As Attorney General, Sessions has green-lighted a federal crackdown on marijuana in states that have legalized it.

He and Trump are also blocking sanctuary cities from receiving federal grants. (A federal judge recently stayed Trump’s executive order on grounds that it violates the Tenth Amendment, but Trump and Sessions are appealing the decision.)

Trump is also seeking to gut California’s tough environmental rules. His Interior Department is opening more of California’s federal land and coastline to oil and gas drilling, and Trump’s EPA is moving to repeal new restrictions on a type of heavily-polluting truck California was relying on to meet its climate and air quality goals.

Meanwhile, the Republican House has approved the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which would prevent states from enforcing their own laws barring concealed handguns against visitors from other states that permitted them.

For the new GOP, states’ rights be damned. Now it’s all about consolidating power in Washington, under Trump.

The third former pillar of Republicanism was a hard line on Russian aggression.

When Obama forged the New Start treaty with Moscow in 2010, Republicans in Congress charged that Vladimir Putin couldn’t be trusted to carry out any arms control agreement.

And they complained that Obama wasn’t doing enough to deter Putin in Eastern Ukraine. “Every time [Obama] goes on national television and threatens Putin or anyone like Putin, everybody’s eyes roll, including mine,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. “We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression.”

That was then. Now, despite explicit findings by American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election – the most direct attack on American democracy ever attempted by a foreign power – Republicans in Congress want to give Russia a pass.

They don’t even want to take steps to prevent further Russian meddling. They’ve played down a January report by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warning that the Kremlin will likely move to influence upcoming U.S. elections, including those this year and in 2020.

The reason, of course, is the GOP doesn’t want to do anything that might hurt Trump or rile his followers.

The GOP under Trump isn’t the first political party to bend its principles to suit political expediency. But it may be the first to jettison its principles entirely, and over so short a time.

If Republicans no longer care about the federal debt, or state’s rights, or Russian aggression – what exactly do they care about? What are the core principles of today’s Republican Party?

Winning and getting even.

But as a year with Trump as president has shown, this is no formula for governing.

January 21, 2018

Maybe Trump inadvertently hit on something when he called Kim Jong Un by name and referred to him as Little Rocket Man. Never before had a US President even so much as mentioned his name. Kim has wanted to be a player on the world stage, and, now that his little tiff with Trump is all over world headlines, perhaps he feels vindicated. Could this have had the effect of bringing the two Koreas closer together? They do seems to be making peace in light of the Winter Olympics.

Maybe this is all Kim wanted - to be recognized by name. He called Trump a dotard and Trump called him little rocket man, but so what. He engaged in verbal jousting with the leader of the free world. Locker room banter as "grab'em by the pussy" Trump would call it. Guy talk. Well maybe now Kim feels that in order to really get one up on the dotard, he'll make peace with South Korea leaving the US out in the cold. It's really between the two Koreas. The US needn't have anything to do with it.

Well that might be a good thing - a united Korea. One less hot spot in the world. One more area where the US need not be involved. They should go for it.

Moynihan noted that in 2017, Bank of America had $16.6 billion of net income available to shareholders and returned $16.8 billion through dividends and buyback. “So, yes, we will expect to return more capital to shareholders given the tax [cut].”

Even the expectation of a big corporate tax cut have caused shares to soar.

Because the richest 1 percent of Americans owns 40 percent of all shares of stock, and the richest fifth owns 80 percent, this is great news for the wealthy.

Rubbish.Analysts at RBC Capital Markets believe Apple will bring back to the U.S. $207 billion after taxes and “almost all of it” will be used to reward shareholders through share buybacks or dividends.

Apple also announced that all employees will get $2,500 of restricted stock. Good for Apple employees, but another acknowledgement that the biggest beneficiaries of the tax cut will be shareholders.

The new tax law is a great deal for Apple and its shareholders. Apple has been sitting on a huge “overseas” money hoard of some $252 billion, as Apple’s accountants have assigned its earnings to other countries with lower tax rates than the United States.

Now, though, Apple’s accountants can reallocate the money to the United States subject to a one-time tax of 15.5 percent – lower even than the new corporate tax of 21 percent.

In addition, the new law allows U.S. companies to pay only a 10.5 percent tax on “foreign profits” – inviting Apple’s accountants to continue to find ways to transfer its future profits abroad, and further boosting Apple’s shares.

Bottom line: Apple pays less in taxes so it can send out more dividends and buy back more shares of stock.

Make no mistake: Trump and the Republicans are working on behalf of America’s biggest and richest investors, not American workers.

This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, the big investors are the ones who invested in getting Trump and the Republicans into office.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has said he is not taking a 2020 presidential run "off the table," but he has declined to comment any further on his plans beyond this year's relection campaign for the U.S. Senate. (Photo: AP/Jacquelyn Martin/Seth Wenig/Photo montage by Salon)

Politico reported late Monday that Trump had recently shared this view with "a Republican with close ties to the White House." The 71-year-old president's conclusion wasn't based on politics; according to the anonymous Republican, "Trump was hung up on Sanders' age, arguing that Sanders, now 76, wouldn't have the energy to run another national campaign."

Trump also brushed off a potential challenge from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a frequent target of the president's public attacks. "He's always asking people, 'Who do you think is going to run against me?'" the Politico source said of Trump. "I don't think he sees anyone, right now, being a serious competitor."

Although recent polling focused on the 2020 race has shown former Vice President Joe Biden winning over more Democratic voters than Sanders or Warren—with media icon Oprah Winfrey also beating out Warren—since the fall of 2017, the senators have consistentlydefeated Trump in polls that pit them against the president. A November poll (pdf) had Sanders leading Trump 42 to 36 percent.

Sanders has said he is not taking a 2020 presidential run "off the table," but he has declined to comment any further on his plans beyond this year's relection campaign for the U.S. Senate. However, political observers and analysts have suggested both Warren and Sanders are making moves that indicate they will enter the next race for president.

While Sanders has jumped into his role as the Democratic Party's outreach chair—pushing the party further left and fostering relationships with Democrats, even as he maintains his Independent status—Warren has, as Politico noted after the New Year, "amassed more money in her campaign war chest than nearly any senator in modern history, groomed political connections with Democrats who've been skeptical of her in the past, and worked to bolster her bipartisan and foreign policy bona fides."

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More than 200 workers were laid off by air-conditioning giant Carrier on Thursday at the Indiana plant. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

In November of 2016, then-President-elect Donald Trump touted a deal he negotiated with an Indianapolis Carrier plant that he claimed would keep jobs from moving to Mexico. On Thursday, that very same Carrier plant, as expected, laid off more than 200 workers—a move critics highlighted as further proof Trump's deal with the company was a "con" all along.

"He's a pure and simple con man...and I'm sorry people bought into his message." —Chuck Jones, former president of United Steelworkers 1999

Responding to the layoffs, Carrier workers who voted for Trump expressed regret that they ever believed he would follow through on his promises.

"Financially, I thought he's a genius. I said, 'Well, America's in debt; maybe he can do something and turn the economy around.' Obviously, it's not looking that way. Mr. Trump didn't do his research and made himself look silly in front of the nation when these layoffs and early retirements began," Duane Oreskovic, a Trump voter who lost his job Thursday, told the New Yorker.

In retrospect, Oreskovic concluded that he wishes he voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

"I would have voted for him if I could do it again," he said.

As Reutersreports, 1,000 workers will remain at the factory—in positions that were "never slated to move"—while the other "jobs are going to the company's plant in Monterrey, Mexico, where workers make about $3 an hour." Carrier, however, will continue to benefit from the $7 million in state tax breaks it was rewarded for keeping its factory in Indiana.

Speaking at an Indianapolis town hall meeting on Wednesday ahead of the layoffs, Chuck Jones, former president of United Steelworkers 1999, slammed Trump for selling workers false hope.

"I think everybody ought to respect the president of the United States and the office he holds," Jones told an audience of workers, many of whom voted for the president in the 2016 election. "But Donald Trump is a liar and an idiot."

Jones immediately criticized Trump after his initial deal with Carrier was announced, calling out the president for inflating the number of jobs he personally "saved." Now retired, Jones is still on the attack, despite receiving death threats after Trump attacked him on Twitter in December.

"When he was saying these jobs would not be leaving this country, not at any point in time did he say, 'I'm bringing back my jobs I've got outside the country. I'm going to bring back my daughter's jobs,'" Jones added. "He's a pure and simple con man, he's a rich elite, and I'm sorry people bought into his message. He sold us a bag of shit, and now we're stuck with it. What a godawful mess he is."

They also come after Trump and high-ranking members of his cabinet touted Walmart's announcement that it is raising the company-wide minimum wage to $11 an hour. The Trump administration refused to address the fact that, on the same day, Walmart laid off thousands of employees, in some cases without notifying them.

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Now that Trump has been president for almost a year, it’s time the media called his behavior for what it is rather than try to normalize it. Here are the six most misleading media euphemisms for conduct unbecoming a president:

1. Calling Trump’s tweets “presidential “statements” or “press releases.” “The President is the President of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States,” Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, said last June when asked during his daily briefing how his tweets should be characterized

Wrong. Trump’s tweets are mostly rants off the top of his head – many of them wild, inconsistent, rude, crude, and bizarre.

Normal presidential statements are products of careful thought. Advisers weigh in. Consequences are considered. Alternatives are deliberated. Which is why such statements are considered important indicators of public policy, domestically and internationally.

Trump’s tweet storms are relevant only to judging his mood on a particular day at a particular time.

Rubbish. Unlike the White House and Camp David, the traditional presidential retreat, both of which are owned by taxpayers, Mar-a-Lago is a profit-making business owned by Trump.

The White House is open for public tours; Mar-a-Lago is open only to members who can pay $200,000 to join.

Mar-a-Lago, along with the other Trump resort properties that he visits regularly, constitute a massive conflict of interest. Every visit promotes the Trump resort brand, adding directly to Trump’s wealth.

Normal presidents don’t make money off the presidency. Trump does. His resorts should be called what they are – Trump’s businesses.

Last fall, NPR’s then news director, Michael Oreskes defended NPR’s refusal to use the term “liar” when describing Trump, explaining that the word constitutes “an angry tone” of “editorializing” that “confirms opinions.”

In January, Maggie Haberman, a leading Times’ political reporter, claimed that her job was “showing when something untrue is said. Our job is not to say ‘lied.’”

Wrong. Normal presidents may exaggerate; some occasionally lie. But Trump has taken lying to an entirely new level. He lies like other people breath. Almost nothing that comes out of his mouth can assumed to be true.

For Trump, lying is part of his overall strategy, his MO, and his pathology. Not to call them lies, or to deem him a liar, is itself misleading.

4. Referring to Trump’s and his aide’s possible “cooperation” or “coordination” with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.

This won’t due. “Cooperation” and “coordination” sound as if Trump and his campaign assistants were merely being polite to the Russians, engaged in a kind of innocent parallel play.

But nothing about what we’ve seen and heard so far suggests politeness or innocence. “Collusion” is the proper word, suggesting complicity in a conspiracy.

If true – if Trump or his aides did collude with the Russians to throw the election his way – they were engaged in treason, another important word that rarely appears in news reports.

Rubbish. They’re not going after “welfare.” Welfare – federal public assistance to the poor – was gutted in 1996. Trump and Ryan are aiming at Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Nor are they seeking to “reform” these programs. They want to cut them in order to pay for the huge tax cut they’ve given corporations and the wealthy. “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform,” Ryan said recently, “which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”

So call it what it is: Planned cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

6. Describing Trump’s comments as “racially charged.” “Racially charged” sounds like Trump doesn’t intend them to be racist but some people hear them that way. Rubbish.

Trump’s recent harangue against immigrants from “shitholes” in Latin America and Africa comes only weeks after The New York Timesreported that at another Oval Office meeting Trump said Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians who visit the US would never “go back to their huts.”

This is the man who built his political career on the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa, who launched his presidential campaign with racist comments about Mexican immigrants, who saw “fine people on both sides” in the Charlottesville march of white supremacists, and who attacked African-American football players for being “unpatriotic” because they kneeled during the National Anthem to protest police discrimination.

This is the same man who in 1989 took out full page ads in New York newspapers demanding the return of the death penalty so it could be applied to five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park – and who still refuses to admit his error even though they were exonerated by DNA evidence.

Stop using terms like “racially charged” to describe his statements. Face it. Trump is a racist, and his comments are racist.

Words matter. It’s important to describe Trump accurately. Every American must understand who we have as president.

Instead of discussing immigration policy, the media is having a tizzy over Trump's use of the word shithole to describe certain poor countries. But this is what always happens. Trump can say one outrageous word and the media has a fit for days. As a result, I am not better informed about the issue of immigration. Other than it being ridiculous that a pregnant woman can fly here, have a baby and that baby becomes an immediate American citizen, I am not better informed by all the media attention given to the word shithole. The way the media censors the spelling of the word, they call it s---hole which comes out when spoken like asshole which is just as bad.

So the President of the US uses vulgar language. What else is new? It's the least of our concerns in this day and age. All I can say is ... get used to it. As long as Trump is President, that's what you're going to get. It's the tabloid age. These words shouldn't shock you at this point. In fact the shock value is enhanced every time the media has a shitfit over some of Trump's outrageous language or activities. He's pushing the envelope of what kind of behavior is acceptable in a President, and he's totally getting away with it.

But Trump doesn't care. As long as Republicans control both Houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, he can say and do whatever he wants. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (in California) stayed Trump's attempt to dismantle DACA, but so what? Now it will go to the Supreme Court and Trump will win. The Dreamers will lose, and that's the game in the US. A judge in the 9th Circuit (in California) rules against Trump, says that Trump's executive orders are illegal and then the Supreme Court overrules the 9th Circuit (in California) and Trump gets his way. The Trumpsters hate California so what else is new?

Republicans will not complain about Trump no matter how outrageous his words or actions. He could have sex with a porn star on national TV, and they wouldn't raise an eyebrow as long as they are getting everything they want .. tax breaks for the rich and cuts in social security, Medicare, Medicaid TANF, EBT and every other social program which benefits anyone other than the rich. It was DEMOCRATIC Senator Dick Durbin who reported the shithole comment. Of course it wasn't on tape so it's his word against Trump's word. Who do you think has the bigger microphone?

White House Senior Adviser to the President Jared Kushner speaks during a conversation with Haim Saban at Saban Forum, December 3, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is once more under intense scrutiny after new reporting revealed that his lucrative financial relationship with Israel has deepened even as his influence over U.S. Middle East policy—from his leading role in Trump's effort to "derail" a U.N. vote against Israel to his sway over the president's Jerusalem move—has continued to grow.

"There has indeed been clear collusion proven between pre-inaugurated Trump and a foreign power—with Israel, to sink Obama's U.N. policy on settlements." —Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

According to a report published Sunday by the New York Times, Kushner's real estate firm received a $30 million investment from Menora Mivtachim—one of Israel's largest financial institutions—just before he accompanied Trump on his first diplomatic trip to Israel last year.

"The deal, which was not made public, pumped significant new equity into 10 Maryland apartment complexes controlled by Mr. Kushner's firm," the Times notes. "While Mr. Kushner has sold parts of his business since taking a White House job last year, he still has stakes in most of the family empire—including the apartment buildings in and around Baltimore."

While Menora executive Ran Markman insisted that Kushner's role in directing America's Middle East policy "didn't make us do the deal," critics raised pointed questions about the ethics of the transaction.

Describing Kushner as "the worst and most oppressive kind of slum lord," The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald asked, "Are you comfortable with having Jared Kushner be the beneficiary of huge amounts of Israeli financing at the same time he's overseeing U.S. foreign policy on Israel?"

As Jared Kushner oversees US policy on Israel, Israeli financiers are pouring huge - and desperately needed - amounts of cash into his cash-starved businesses https://t.co/4R7GXNp4H7

And the Menora deal is just one component of Kushner's sprawling and complex financial ties with Israel, the Times makes clear.

In April, the Times reported that the Kushners had teamed up with at least one member of Israel’s wealthy Steinmetz family to buy nearly $200 million of Manhattan apartment buildings, as well as to build a luxury rental tower in New Jersey...

Mr. Kushner's company has also taken out at least four loans from Israel's largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of a Justice Department investigation over allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes.

The firm also bought several floors of the former New York Timesheadquarters building in Manhattan from Lev Leviev, an Israeli businessman and philanthropist.

And the Kushner family's foundation continues to donate money to a settlement group in the West Bank.

"No one could ever imagine this scale of ongoing business interests, not in a local peanut farm or a hardware store but sprawling global businesses that give the president and his top adviser personal economic stakes in an astounding number of policy interests," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.

The Times report comes just days after the Wall Street Journalrevealed that the Trump transition team's failed effort to undermine a 2016 United Nations Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank—led in part by Kushner and encouraged by Israeli government officials—"was wider and more intense than has been reported."

According to the Journal, Kushner "directed" former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to pressure foreign governments—including Russia—to delay or defeat the resolution. Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about the effort last month.

Greenwald concluded in a tweet on Sunday that the Trump transition team's campaign to defeat the U.N. resolution at Israel's behest lays bare a fact that is "uncomfortable for many."

January 08, 2018

For more than a year now, I’ve been hearing from people in the inner circles of official Washington – GOP lobbyists, Republican pundits, even a few Republican members of Congress – that Donald Trump is remarkably stupid.

I figured they couldn’t be right because really stupid people don’t become presidents of the United States. Even George W. Bush was smart enough to hire smart people to run his campaign and then his White House.

Several months back when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “f—king moron,” I discounted it. I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to serve in a president’s cabinet, and I’ve heard members of other president’s cabinets describe their bosses in similar terms.

Now comes “Fire and Fury,” a book by journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed more than 200 people who dealt with Trump as a candidate and president, including senior White House staff members.

In it, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster calls Trump a “dope.” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus both refer to him as an “idiot.” Rupert Murdoch says Trump is a “f—king idiot.”

Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn describes Trump as “dumb as sh-t,” explaining that “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

When one of Trump’s campaign aides tried to educate him about the Constitution, Trump couldn’t focus. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” the aide recalled, "before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”

Trump doesn’t think he’s stupid. “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he tweeted last Saturday. As he earlier recounted, “I went to an Ivy League college … I did very well. I’m a very intelligent person.”

Trump wasn’t exactly an academic star. One of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Finance purportedly said that he was “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”

Trump biographer Gwenda Blair wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who had known Trump’s older brother.

But hold on. It would be dangerous to underestimate this man.

Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, it still doesn’t follow that he’s stupid.

There’s another form of intelligence, called “emotional intelligence.”

Emotional intelligence is a concept developed by two psychologists, John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire, and Yale’s Peter Salovey, and it was popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name.

Mayer and Salovey define emotional intelligence as the ability to do two things – “understand and manage our own emotions,” and “recognize and influence the emotions of others.”

Granted, Trump hasn’t displayed much capacity for the first. He’s thin-skinned, narcissistic, and vindictive. As dozens of Republican foreign policy experts put it, “he is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism."

Okay, but what about Mayer and Salovey’s second aspect of emotional intelligence – influencing the emotions of others?

This is where Trump shines. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities – their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires – and use them for his own purposes.

To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman.

He’s always been a conman. He conned hundreds of young people and their parents into paying to attend his near worthless Trump University. He conned banks into lending him more money even after he repeatedly failed to pay them. He conned contractors to work for him and then stiffed them.

Granted, he hasn’t always been a great conman. Had he been, his cons would have paid off.

By his own account, in 1976, when Trump was starting his career, he was worth about $200 million, much of it from his father. Today he says he’s worth some $8 billion. If he’d just put the original $200 million into an index fund and reinvested the dividends, he’d be worth $12 billion today.

But he’s been a great political conman. He conned 62,979,879 Americans to vote for him in November 2016 by getting them to believe his lies about Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the “wonderful,” “beautiful” things he’d do for the people who’d support him.

And he’s still conning many of them.

Political conning is Trump’s genius. This genius – combined with his utter stupidity in every other dimension of his being – poses a clear and present danger to America and the world.

January 06, 2018

No sooner than California had legalized cannabis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he would have the Federal US attorneys come after pot operations. Although pot is legal for medicinal and recreational purposes in several states, it's still illegal at the Federal level. So, while Obama said to cool it as far as Federal prosecutions were concerned, Sessions wants the marijuana industry taken over a barrel with their pants down. Colorado US Attorney Bob Troyer said that he would not do anything differently even though Sessions ended the so-called Cole memorandum, which sharply limited what charges prosecutors could pursue in legal pot states. California's US attorney hasn't weighed in yet. Since US attorneys are political appointees, they can be replaced by the Trump administration with those who support Sessions' views. It doesn't bode well for the fledgling pot industry in California and elsewhere.

Another slap in the face to California is that Trump has now made it OK for the oil industry to start drilling again off its coast. The Obama administration had a moratorium on drilling off US coasts. Now that has changed, and, despite California's leadership on global warming, it must now submit to a take down by the Trump administration. Trump is showing California just who is boss. Of course states' rights don't matter when it comes to blue states' rights. The red states won't let the Federal government tell them what to do, but it remains to be seen how much blowback there will be from California towards the Federal government.

The third thing that California will have to endure which has been imposed on its citizens by Trump is that the tax plan recently passed will probably increase Federal taxes for many Californians. That is because the property and state tax deductions have been reduced to $10,000. They used to be unlimited. Since California real estate is very high priced compared to other states, in particular compared to the Trump supporter states, property taxes are also very high and $10,000 in deductions just won't cut it. Get ready Californians. If you live in even a modest priced house in California, your Federal taxes are going up not down as Trump had promised. This will put pressure on lowering California state and local property taxes which will hamper state and local governments, an outcome much preferred by the Trump administration. However, blue states, which have much lower real estate values will not be affected as much.

The third thing the Trump administration has done in chastising and reprimanding California is the building of "the wall." He's got the prototypes up right on the border in San Diego for all to see. California is a sanctuary state which means that California and many cities and counties within California do not support Trump's tough anti-immigrant stand. Tough shit says Trump. We'll build the wall there first, and we'll find other ways to punish California for taking a pro-immigrant stand. When we get done with you, you'll be crying for mercy.

Is it time for California to secede from the union? The idea has been floated before. Let's see what Governor Jerry Brown's response is to the aggressive anti-California actions taken by Trump and his henchmen.

Supporters of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) hold signs during an event on health care September 13, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Sen. Sanders held an event to introduce the Medicare for All Act of 2017. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Amid the explosive anecdotal accounts contained in the new book, Fire & Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, is an exchange between the president and top aides in which Trump reportedly demanded to know: "Why can't Medicare simply cover everybody?"

While fellow journalists have questioned Wolff's integrity as a reporter, and the White House has characterized his book as a work of "fantasy," the publisher has pushed up its release after Trump himself intervened with legal threats to block it from being release.

Despite that, Wolff apparently was given wide-ranging access, says he recorded many of his interviews with top staffers and insiders, and stands by the accounts contained in Fire & Fury. Speaking to NBC News on Friday morning, Wolff said he stands by "absolutely everything" reported in his book.

"My credibility," he said of Trump's attacks against him, "is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on Earth."

On the issue of healthcare, according to an excerpt, Wolff writes:

Trump had little or no interest in the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare. The details of the contested legislation were, to him, particularly boring; his attention would begin wandering from the first words of a policy discussion. He would have been able to enumerate few of the particulars of Obamacare—other than expressing glee about the silly Obama pledge that everyone could keep his or her doctor—and he certainly could not make any kind of meaningful distinction, positive or negative, between the healthcare system before Obamacare and the one after.

That reporting, of course, largely betrays the fact that Trump repeatedly promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and supported numerous attempts by Republicans in Congress to do exactly that. By signing the "GOP tax scam" into law just before the Christmas holiday, Trump specifically bragged that a key component and victory of the legislation was its ending of the ACA's individual mandate—a provision that experts say will force an estimated 13 million people to lose their coverage.

However, while Trump is documented as knowing very little about how the ACA actually worked or healthcare policy overall, he has repeatedly let slip—both as a candidate and since taking office—that he perceives the wisdom of a system that covers everyone and even said explicitly at one point that "government's gonna pay for it."

In May of 2017, President Trump praised Australia as having "better healthcare" than Americans have in the United States, though it was unclear if he actually knew the Australians enjoy a single-payer system administered by the government.

And during the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump told 60 Minute's Scott Pelley that though it was a very "un-Republican thing for me to say," he would create a universal system which would "take care of everybody"—even those too poor to afford private insurance. Watch:

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January 04, 2018

Now Trump and Kim Il Jong are taunting each other over the size of their nuclear buttons. If this isn't the most puerile, infantile type of discourse going on on the world stage, I don't know what is. Except for the fact that they are trash talking each other about something that could destroy civilization as we know it, it could be dismissed as childish. Let's just have a wrestling match between Kim and Trump and decide things that way. Or they could each send in their substitutes to go at it and may the best man win.

Now Kim wants to "come to the table" and have talks with his counterparts in South Korea. Is it because he's afraid of Trump's larger nuclear button? Has Trump finally faced him down with his juvenile rhetoric? Could be. Who knows? Maybe diplomacy should be conducted by trash talking the other side till one of them backs down. Has Kim backed down? Trump will no doubt take credit if Kim does get started with talks. He takes credit for everything else. Even for the fact that there were zero deaths on commercial aviation in 2017. Not on military aviation though.

Even before the Navy cargo plane crash Wednesday, the number of U.S. troops killed in plane crashes had skyrocketed this year along with the total number of crashes overall compared to this point a year ago, a Fox News investigation has uncovered.

So far this year, there have been 22 U.S. military non-combat plane crashes flying routine operations. That’s up 38 percent from this time last year.

The number of American troops killed in these plane crashes has more than doubled. Following the announcement by the 7th Fleet Thursday night that it has ended its search for three missing American sailors hundreds of miles off the coast of Japan, the number of U.S. service members lost to plane crashes in 2017 stands at 37. That is more than 130 percent higher than the number killed in non-combat plane crashes at this point in 2016.

I guess none died in actual combat operations, just non-combat operations. Something doesn't seem right about this. Is this the price that must be paid for combat readiness? What is the percentage of non-combat flights compared to actual combat flights? I guess since military operations are permanent and ongoing, it wouldn't matter whether or not there was an actual war going on. Peace could be as deadly as war at least for those flying non-combat operations.

International campaign to abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) activists wearing masks to look like US President Donald Trump and North Korean Kim Jong-Un pose next to a Styrofoam effigy of a nuclear bomb while protesting in front of the American Embassy on September 13, 2017 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo: Omer Messinger/Getty Images)

Just as it appeared that long inflamed tensions on the Korean Peninsula were beginning to wane, President Donald Trump further demonstrated his willingness to drag the world to the brink of nuclear war Tuesday night with a tweet boasting of the size and power of America's (nonexistent) "nuclear button."

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!

Trump's tweet came a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said in a speech that he "always" has a nuclear button on his desk, but that he would only use it if threatened.

Kim also indicated that he would be willing to engage in direct talks with South Korea, an overture that was welcomed by the South as a step toward peace and stability. Early Wednesday, North and South Korea reopened a communication "hotline" that had been closed since February of 2016, another sign of "easing tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul," the Wall Street Journalreports.

"These casual threats made on Twitter are a huge distraction from the serious diplomatic work that needs to be done." —Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

But with a single tweet, Trump threw the potential of serious negotiations into chaos—a move critics characterized as further evidence of his lack of fitness for office.

"This Tweet alone is grounds for removal from office under the 25th Amendment," argued Richard Painter, former White House ethics lawyer and current vice chairman of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. "This man should not have nukes."

"A war with North Korea could kill millions in a matter of days and would very likely do nothing but lead to the further proliferation of nuclear weapons," Win Without War wrote on Twitter Tuesday night. "If the president won't pursue diplomacy, we should all demand a global diplomatic intervention to stop a pointless war."

The U.K.-based Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) also weighed in Wednesday morning, urging that Trump's "childish games must stop."

"It's incredible that it even needs to be said, but nuclear war is no laughing matter," CND concluded. "These casual threats made on Twitter are a huge distraction from the serious diplomatic work that needs to be done."

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January 01, 2018

What if Mueller concludes that Trump and his henchmen colluded with Russia to "get dirt on Hillary"? Would that open the door for Trump's removal from office and/or a redo of the election? Unfortunately no, even though Hillary has indicated that that should be the outcome. However, there is no mechanism in the US Constitution for removal of Trump except by Congress. Since the Republicans control Congress, Democrats just don't have the votes to impeach Trump. So Trump's being impeached and removed from office is just a pipe dream unless you want to rewrite the US Constitution or have a revolution.

In fact Trump could commit high crimes and misdemeanors, and nothing would be done about it for the same reason. We're stuck with Trump until he's voted out of office or until Democrats control Congress. Too bad for Hillary. We'll just have to wait till 2018 and/or 2020 and see what happens.

December 31, 2017

The New York Times reveals the investigation into collusion allegations was prompted by a Trump campaign adviser bragging to an Australian diplomat that he knew about Russia acquiring political dirt on Hillary Clinton

George Papadopoulos, a former adviser for President Donald Trump's campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during its investigation into allegations that the campaign colluded with the Russian government. (Photo: LinkedIn)

A report by the New York Times published Saturday provides new insight into the investigation of potential collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russian officials, and the role of George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the campaign who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with individuals who had ties to the Russian government.

The Times—citing interviews and recently obtained documents—reveals that the FBI's probe reportedly was not prompted by the dossier compiled by a former British spy, as Trump and others have alleged, but rather because in May of 2016 Papadopoulos drunkenly bragged to Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat based in Britian, that "Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton," in the form of thousands of stolen emails.

"The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians, answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?" the Times reports. "It was firsthand information from one of America's closest intelligence allies."

"Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians' role," the Times explains—albeit, two months after receiving the tip. Still, the Times concludes, "the hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired."

What remains unclear from the Times report is why the Australians waited two months to alert the FBI (the Australian Embassy in D.C. declined to comment) and whether Papadopoulos alerted other members of the Trump campaign when he was told that Russians were in possession of "thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton." While the documents obtained by the Times "show no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos discussed the stolen messages with the campaign," the paper points out that it was mere weeks before "he opened up to Mr. Downer, the Australian diplomat, about his contacts with the Russians."

After news broke earlier this year that Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was reportedly cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is now leading the investigation into allegations of collusion, the president and those around him tried to downplay the influence of the former foreign policy adviser, with Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo even dismissing him as a "coffee boy."

"He was hardly central to the daily running of the Trump campaign, yet Mr. Papadopoulos continuously found ways to make himself useful to senior Trump advisers," and "interviews and new documents show that he stayed influential throughout the campaign," the Times notes. "Two months before the election, for instance, he helped arrange a New York meeting between Mr. Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt."

So far, Mueller has charged four former Trump officials, including Papadopoulos: in October, Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were indicted on federal charges that were uncovered as part of the probe but are unrelated to collusion (they've pleaded not guilty to all charges); however, at the beginning of December, Trump's former national security adviser Ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The Times report comes amid mounting concerns that Trump may fire Mueller as the investigation intensifies, even as the White House continues to deny any plans to do so. Earlier this week, Trump said he had an"absolute right" to do what he wants with the Justice Department, which critics characterized as a "veiled threat" against the special counsel. The American public has promised mass protests if the president dismisses Mueller before the probe concludes, and continues to closely follow the story—which this week NPR readers selected as the top political story of 2017.

Foreign policy analysts, legal experts, and reporters flooded social media with takeaways from the Times report on Saturday. Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, tweeted: "it will be hard for the Trump team to continue to portray Papadopoulos as a low-level volunteer who had limited access. But given that he's on Mueller's team, they will continue to do so."

December 29, 2017

Almost one year in, it’s time for another update for Trump voters on his election promises:

1. He told you he’d cut your taxes, and that the super-rich like him would pay more. You bought it. But his new tax law does the opposite. By 2027, according several nonpartisan analyses, the richest 1 percent will have got 83 percent of the tax cut and the richest 0.1 percent, 60 percent of it. As Trump told his wealthy friends at Mar-a-Lago just days after the tax bill became law, “You all just got a lot richer.”

2. He promised to close “special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors but unfair to American workers,” especially the notorious “carried interest” loophole for private-equity, hedge fund, and real estate partners. You bought it. But the new tax law keeps the “carried interest” loophole.

3. He told you he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “beautiful.” You bought it. But he didn’t repeal and he didn’t replace. (Just as well: His plan would have knocked at least 23 million off health insurance, including many of you.) Instead, he’s doing what he can to cut it back and replace it with nothing. The new tax law will result in 13 million people losing health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

4. He told you he’d invest $1 trillion in our nation’ crumbling infrastructure. You bought it. But after his giant tax cut for corporations and millionaires, there’s no money left for infrastructure.

5. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. But he’s brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses, and he’s filled departments and agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who are crafting new policies for the same industries they recently worked for.

6. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. But he has created the most dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, and has already fired and replaced so many assistants (one of them hired and fired in a little more than a week) that people there barely know who’s in charge of what.

7. He told you he’d “bring down drug prices” by making deals with drug companies. You bought it. But now the White House says that promise is “inoperative.”

8. He promised “a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.” You bought it. But foreign lobbyists are still raising money for American elections.

9. He told you “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” You bought it. But he and House Speaker Paul Ryan are already planning such cuts in order to deal with the ballooning deficit created, in part, by the new tax law for corporations and the rich.

10. He promised “six weeks of paid maternity leave to any mother with a newborn child whose employer does not provide the benefit.” You bought it. But the giant tax cut for corporations and the rich doesn’t leave any money for this.

11. He said that on Day One he’d label China a “currency manipulator.” You bought it. But then he met with China’s president Xi Jinping and declared “China is not a currency manipulator.” Ever since then, Trump has been cozying up to Xi.

12. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. But then he bombed Syria.

13. He said he’d build a “wall” across the southern border. You believed him. But there’s no money for that, either. Chief of staff John Kelly says it is “unlikely that we will build a wall, a physical barrier, from sea to shining sea.”

14. He promised that the many women who accused him of sexual misconduct “will be sued after the election is over.” You bought it. He hasn’t sued them, presumably because he doesn’t want the truth to come out.

15. He said he would not be a president who took vacations. “I would not be a president that takes time off,” he promised, and he called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief.” You bought it. But since becoming President he has spent nearly 25 percent of his days at one of his golf properties for some portion of the day, according to Golf News Network, at a cost to taxpayers of over $77 million. That’s already more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama cost in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.

16. He said he’d force companies to keep jobs in America, and that there would be “consequences” for companies that shipped jobs abroad. You believed him. But despite their promises, Carrier, Ford, GM, and the rest have continued to ship jobs to Mexico and China. Carrier (a division of United Technologies) has moved ahead with plans to send 1,000 jobs at its Indiana plant to Mexico. Notwithstanding, the federal government has rewarded United Technologies with 15 new contracts since Trump’s inauguration. Last year, Microsoft opened a new factory in Wilsonville, Oregon, that was supposed to herald a new era in domestic tech manufacturing. But in July, the company announced it was closing the plant. More than 100 workers and contractors will lose their jobs when production shifts to China. GE is sending jobs to Canada. IBM is sending them to Costa Rica, Egypt, Argentina, and Brazil. There have been no “consequences” for sending all these jobs overseas.

17. He promised to revive the struggling coal industry and “bring back thousands” of lost mining jobs. You bought it. But coal jobs continue to disappear. Since Trump’s victory, at least 6 plants that relied on coal have closed or announced they will close. Another 40 are projected to close during the president’s four-year term. Utilities continue to switch to natural gas instead of coal.

18. He promised to protect steel workers. But according to the American Iron and Steel Institute, which tracks shipments, steel imports were 19.4 percent higher in the first 10 months of 2017 than in the same period last year. That import surge has hurt American steel workers, who were already struggling against a glut of cheap Chinese steel. For example, ArcelorMittal just announced it will soon lay off 150 of its 207 steel workers at its plant in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

19. He said he’d make America safer. You believed him. But according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 377 mass shootings so far this year, including 58 people killed and hundreds injured at a concert in Las Vegas, and 26 churchgoers killed and 20 injured at a church in Texas. Trump refuses to consider any gun controls.

20. He said he’d release his taxes. “I’m under a routine audit and it’ll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished it will be released,“ he promised during the campaign. He hasn’t released his taxes.

The comments—first reported by CBS News on Sunday—came just hours after Trump signed the $1.5 trillion Republican tax bill into law.

According to two of Trump's friends who described the Friday-night event to CBS, the president "directed those comments to friends dining nearby at the exclusive club." Given that the Mar-a-Lago initiation cost is $200,000 and annual dues are $14,000, it's safe to assume that those "friends" are "some of the most affluent members of society."

As Common Dreams has reported, Trump has been increasingly open about the central objectives of the GOP tax bill since it passed both houses of Congress. On Friday, Trump bragged that "corporations are literally going wild" about the legislation, comments that came a few days after Trump described the bill's corporate rate cut as "probably the most important factor."

Polls have consistently found that Americans did not buy the GOP's attempt to present their tax bill as a boon for the middle class. A CBS News poll published earlier this month found that 76 percent of Americans believe the Republican tax bill will benefit large corporations, while only 31 percent said they believe it will help the middle class.

Independent analyses have shown this view of the bill to be correct. According tothe nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, 80 percent of the bill's benefits will go to the top one percent by 2027, while millions of middle class Americans will see their taxes rise.

On social media, critics of the president noted that—at least in private—"Trump is finally telling the truth about his tax bill."

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"Instead of bragging about more Americans without health insurance, we should join every other major country on Earth, guarantee healthcare for all people, and end the absurdity of paying twice as much per capita for healthcare, as every other major nation," Sanders said. (Photo: CNN/Screengrab)

In an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed President Donald Trump for "bragging" about a provision in the GOP tax bill that could throw 13 million Americans off their health insurance and argued that the U.S. should instead be working toward guaranteeing healthcare to all Americans as a right.

"Instead of bragging about more Americans without health insurance, we should join every other major country on Earth, guarantee healthcare for all people, and end the absurdity of paying twice as much per capita for healthcare as every other major nation," the Vermont senator said.

Sanders was reacting Trump's recent comments on the GOP tax bill's repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. Trump claimed that the provision "essentially" repeals Obamacare, and insisted that he "will come up with something better."

The Republican Party's previous healthcare push, Sanders was quick to note, resulted in a bill that would have thrown more than 20 million Americans off their health insurance.

Sanders' remarks came in a wide-ranging interview in which he also denounced Trump for lying about who benefits from his tax plan and said Republicans should be "very" worried about their 2018 electoral prospects, given the deep unpopularity of their tax legislation.

"What we're seeing in Alabama, what we're seeing in Virginia, New Jersey and in states all across this country, are large voter turnouts, are people standing up and fighting back and demanding that we have a government that represents all of us, not just the one percent."

The Vermont senator also denounced Congress's lack of action to protect dreamers, calling it a "moral outrage."

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Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, speaks on the floor of the General Assembly on December 21, 2017 in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In a speech one critic likened to "a bully throwing a temper tantrum on the world stage," U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday slammed U.N. member states for refusing to line up in support of President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and threatened to withdraw funding if America continues to be "disrespected."

"The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation," Haley declared in a speech at U.N. headquarters in New York. "When a nation is singled out for attack in this organization that nation is disrespected. What's more, that nation is asked to pay for the privilege of being disrespected. In the case of the U.S. we are asked to pay more than anyone else for that dubious privilege."

Despite Haley's threats—and her complaint that the U.S. isn't seeing sufficient return on its "investment"—the U.N. General Assembly voted 128-9 to declare Trump's Jerusalem move "null and void." Guatemala, Togo, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau voted with the U.S and Israel against the resolution. Canada was among the 35 nations that abstentions.

The General Assembly's overwhelming rebuke of the Trump administration came just a day after Haley warned in a Facebook post that "yes, the U.S. will be taking names" during the vote.

In a statement following Thursday's vote, Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, applauded the 128 nations that "stood up to U.S. pressure, which could not obscure the urgency of speaking out against the recklessness and injustice of declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel."

Nikki Haley misrepresenting what the people of the US want in a UN speech that sounds like it was written by Tony Soprano. JVP statement to follow soon. pic.twitter.com/AO8E5EGRDO

"Despite threats from the Trump administration, the U.N. General Assembly vote today showed once again that the U.S. and Israel are increasingly isolated from the global consensus regarding Israel’s appalling disregard for Palestinian rights," Vilkomerson concluded.

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There’s too much yelling these days, so we made this a silent video. (The only casualty was my arm, which ached for days afterward.) Hope you find it helpful. Best wishes for a 2018 that’s better for America than 2017 was.

They can't control Trump's tweeting, but they can control everything else because they hold the purse strings. They control the money. They got their tax breaks for the rich which of course Trump was in favor of also all the while trying to make a case that this was really "tax reform" that would help the middle class. Then they had a celebration in which Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan kowtowed to the Donald telling him how great he was. They wanted him to take full credit for something he had nothing to do with because ... well, they've got his number. Praise the hell out of him, let him spout off and blowhard all he wants. When it comes right down to it, they're in control. Trump is their useful idiot who will rubber stamp what they want, but take all the credit.

Other than that Trump is essentially reduced to issuing executive orders which was all Obama could do. So Trump now has the distinct pleasure of undoing all Obama's executive orders. The Generals will see to it that Trump doesn't do anything really stupid like start a nuclear war. They want to rev up old rivalries, but they don't want all out war. Just enough war to justify humongous defense budgets. That suits them perfectly. God forbid that peace should break out. There goes their money.

Trump's Russia connection will probably boil down to nothing more than a potential real estate deal or other business interests that would benefit the Trump empire. The business of America is business, and the business of the Trump administration is business that benefits the Trump administration. Much ado about nothing because the Mitch McConnells and Paul Ryans of the world have his back.

The best the Democrats can do is to keep harping on the fact that Trump and his fellow Republicans are not really in the business of helping the middle class. What they are doing and want to do more of is to help their own class - the rich. But Trump can spout off all he wants about creating jobs. The economy is not really in his hands, but he can put the best spin on economic events as they happen. Expect a big hole in the deficit similar to the one that occurred after the Reagan tax cuts. Then Reagan in a panic raised taxes. This bunch will probably revert to the "deficits don't matter" mantra. Well, they don't if the Fed can just print money.

December 18, 2017

Ah yes, as long as heroin can be produced chemically and not gotten from a poppy in Afghanistan, it is perfectly legal and legitimate and profitable when sold by a duly established corporation like McKesson which makes $100 million a week in profits. The Washington Post and 60 Minutes have called out McKesson for selling pills to criminal syndicates and supplying small town pharmacies with supplies way out of proportion with the actual number of people who inhabit them. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headed by Trump appointee Scott Pruitt had hoped to slap a huge fine on McKesson and put one of its executives in jail for flagrantly violating its responsibility to check on where its opioid pills were going. Instead they just sold them to all comers fueling the opioid epidemic.

The investigators were ready to come down hard on the fifth-largest public corporation in America, according to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and “60 Minutes.”

“This is the best case we’ve ever had against a major distributor in the history of the Drug Enforcement Administration,” said [David] Schiller, who recently retired as assistant special agent in charge of DEA’s Denver field division after a 30-year career with the agency. “ I said, ‘How do we not go after the number one organization?’ ”

But it didn’t work out that way.

Instead, top attorneys at the DEA and the Justice Department struck a deal earlier this year with the corporation and its powerful lawyers, an agreement that was far more lenient than the field division wanted, according to interviews and internal government documents. Although the agents and investigators said they had plenty of evidence and wanted criminal charges, they were unable to convince the U.S. attorney in Denver that they had enough to bring a case.

What do you expect from an agency headed by Scott Pruitt? According to the New York Times:

So what else is new? Why did Schiller even think he could go after McKesson when the EPA was headed by Scott Pruitt who as Oklahoma's attorney general had repeatedly sued the EPA? In fact he sued the EPA 13 times. Obviously, Trump appointees are rabidly pro-business at the expense of the environment so why would the EPA even think it could go after McKesson's profits? Pruitt is a climate change denier; he doesn't believe in global warming. The Trump administration puts profits over everything else. They're against any regulations that protect people or the environment.

Trump appointees are determined to tear down the agencies they have been appointed to lead. There is no more egregious example of this than Scott Pruitt. Schiller thought he could b ring down McKesson, the fifth largest corporation in the US, but his legal team was intimidated by the lawyers at McKesson who had all graduated from Harvard and Yale. The EPA's lawyers who had graduated from places like Tom Dick University and Sonoma State were no match. So justice comes down to who has the best legal team? High power lawyers versus lawyers from Podunk State who were no match and they knew it?

So the EPA settled for a slap on the wrist - a $150 million fine - about a week and a half's profits for McKesson.

Scott Pruitt can live with that. Heroin in pill form can be distributed to as many people who want it by a legitimate and duly licensed corporation instead of by some criminal gang which distributes the real stuff.

December 16, 2017

The Vermont senator tells the Guardian why the tax bill – which could become law next week – is the result of 40 years’ scheming by the Kochs and others

Bernie Sanders in Washington on Friday in protest against the tax bill. ‘It is based on the fraudulent theory of trickle-down economics that never worked, never will work.’ Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images

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Bernie Sanders has accused Donald Trump and Republican party leaders of capitulating to the demands of the Koch brothers and other wealthy rightwing donors in railroading $1.5tn tax cuts through Congress.

In an interview with the Guardian, the independent US senator from Vermont denounced the tax bill as payback for the billions of dollars that donors have invested in conservative politicians over decades. “What this is all about is nothing more than the Republican party very generously rewarding their wealthy campaign contributors,” he said.

The former presidential challenger said the reform of the tax code, which could clear both the House and the Senate and be signed into law by the the US president as early as next week, was based on the “rightwing extremist ideology of the Koch brothers. You can read it in what they were saying 40 years ago. What they want is an oligarchic form of society in which government plays virtually no role in public education, healthcare or addressing the needs of middle-class and working families.”

The end game, Sanders said, was that “you are on your own. You are 80 years old and you have cancer – good luck to you. Government is not there for you.”

The legislation, which has now been merged to form a single version from earlier Senate and House bills, marks the most substantial redrawing of taxation in America since Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax cuts. It would slash the tax burden on corporations from 35% to 21%, and the top level of individual taxes from 39.6% to 37%.

The tax package is just another Trump lie. Many millions of middle-class Americans will pay more in taxes

Bernie Sanders

But while the bonus to corporations is permanently set in stone, benefits to working families would expire after a number of years. That would leave millions of middle-class families – 83 million, Sanders said – eventually paying more in taxes under the changes, while the most wealthy Americans would continue to cash in.

“This is nothing more than an effort to make the very rich richer,” Sanders told the Guardian. “It is based on the fraudulent theory of trickle-down economics that never worked, never will work.”

Sanders warned of a double blow to working people in which the vast increase in the deficit caused by the tax cuts would subsequently be used by Republicans to justify an assault on welfare benefits. Paul Ryan, the GOP Speaker of the House, has announcedthat he intends to turn to healthcare and anti-poverty programs next year to reduce spending, and conservatives continue to harbor ambitions of destroying Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Sanders said that “after running up a $1.4tn deficit over 10 years they are going to offset that deficit by making massive cuts to social security, Medicare and Medicaid. That is clearly the intention.”

The senator ran Hillary Clinton to a close second place in the 2016 race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Since then he has become arguably the most prominent critic of America’s growing income and wealth inequality and the plight of the working poor.

His attack on the Republicans’ tax plans came a day after the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, issued a withering report that denounced growing in equality in the US. Alston’s initial findings, released on Friday, criticized the tax bill currently going through Congress for hugely increasing already large disparities between rich and poor.

Sanders’ claim that the tax cuts are a thinly disguised reward to billionaire extreme rightwing donors is supported by the statements of some Republican politicians themselves. Chris Collins, a New York congressman, told reporters that pressure from donors made the reform essential.

Last month the leader of the powerful conservative Super Pac the Congressional Leadership Fund, made it clear to the Washington Post that lawmakers who stood in the way of the tax cuts in the House should not expect to receive any of the $100m the body expected to spend on candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

David and Charles Koch have leveraged their own vast wealth – they own Koch Industries, the second largest private company in the US, and are valued by Forbes at $49bn each – by creating a network of other similarly minded wealthy conservatives that runs parallel to the Republican party. In the 2016 election cycle it spent about $250m on candidates who followed their anti-government creed, and the plan for next year is to increase that investment to $400m.

The Koch network has thrown its muscle behind the tax cuts this year. One of its periodic retreats for super-rich donors in New York in October was devoted to the subject of tax reform and attended by the vice-president, Mike Pence.

The brothers first entered the political arena in the 1970s when they began agitating for a bonfire of restrictions on spending by rich individuals and companies on political campaigns. They have consistently fought against government regulations and social programs helping low-income families, in ways that have been advantageous to their business interests that include oil and other energy concerns.

“Anyone who has looked at the Koch brothers and folks like them who have contributed over the years probably billions of dollars in right-wing efforts should not be surprised at the policies coming from Paul Ryan and Donald Trump,” Sanders said.

The senator lamented the unprecedented speed with which the tax plans have been rushed through Congress, and the consequent lack of public debate. As a result, he said, many details of the legislation were still so sketchy they were impossible to understand.

One area that Sanders is especially wary of in the unfolding bill are provisions that would benefit hedge fund managers based on tax havens such as the Virgin Islands. “We believe the provision will apply to probably fewer than 10, maybe even as few as three, hedge fund managers that will result in some $600m in tax breaks over 10 years.”

He added that he had raised the issue on the floor of the US Senate, asking for an explanation from the Republican group, “but we have not been given one”.

Sanders said the tax cuts were particularly punishing for those working Americans who had voted for Trump last November partly on the expectation that his promised tax cuts would ease their financial burdens.

“The tax package is just another Trump lie. Many millions of middle-class Americans will pay more in taxes and if Republicans get their way – and we are going to fight them tooth and nail on this – there will be cuts to social programs that many of Trump’s supporters have depended on for years.”

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the White House Press Corps prior to his Marine One departure from the South Lawn of the White House December 15, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Asked about the GOP tax bill, which is expected to hit the floor of the House and Senate for a final vote early next week, Trump said: "I think we're doing very well, it's something that's going to be monumental. It will be the biggest tax increase—or tax cut—in the history of our country."

As The Intercept's Ryan Grim noted in an analysis earlier this month, the GOP tax bill is "routinely referred to as a $1.5 trillion tax cut. And, in some ways, that's true: On net, it would reduce the amount of taxes collected by the Treasury by about $1.5 trillion over 10 years."

However, "that figure masks the eye-popping scale and audacity of the GOP's rushed restructuring of the economy," Grim adds. "[The bill,] properly described, is two things: the largest tax cut—and also the biggest tax increase—in American history."

This tax increase, as research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has found, would primarily be shouldered by low-income and middle class Americans. Additionally, while the GOP bill would give corporations permanent tax cuts, many of the cuts for middle class and low-income Americans would expire after a decade.

As Common Dreamsreported on Wednesday, House and Senate Republicans reached a backroom "deal" that tilts the benefits of their bill even further toward the wealthiest Americans by reducing the top marginal tax rate from from 39.6 percent to 37 percent.

"Overall, in 2027—when only the corporate tax cuts, slower inflation measure, and individual mandate repeal would remain in place—the Senate bill would, on average, raise taxes or reduce federal expenditures for households with incomes below $75,000 by about $60 billion—while still giving large tax reductions (through its corporate tax cuts) to those at the top," noted CBPP's Chuck Marr.

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America has elected a con man for its President. White male voters and their allegiant wives fell for his con garbage that he was a friend of the working man and his goal was to create more jobs. Then when elected he's turned out to be the biggest friend of the wealthy the US has ever seen. The tax bill, which is a mind boggling transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, is about to be enacted. Social programs which help the poor and middle class are being destroyed. The paradigm for this onslaught on humanity is Trump University which bilked unsuspecting students hoping to get rich out of tens of thousands of dollars. They sued and won. Small solace.

Meanwhile, 41 million Americans live in poverty. 9 million have no cash income whatsoever according to a new study by the UN. Three Americans, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet own as much wealth as half of the American people. The homeless situation has reached crisis proportions. Yet the only "solutions" come about as a result of its impact on the rest of the population.

LA authorities have promised to provide more access to toilets, a critical issue given the deadly outbreak of Hepatitis A that began in San Diego and is spreading on the west coast claiming 21 lives mainly through lack of sanitation in homeless encampments. At night local parks and amenities are closed specifically to keep homeless people out.

Skid Row has had the use of nine toilets at night for 1,800 street-faring people. That’s a ratio well below that mandated by the UN in its camps for Syrian refugees.

American homeless treated worse than refugees? It's nothing new. The rich budget for drugs does not threaten their well being in other aspects of their lives. For the poor a drug habit means they live on the street. You can't do drugs if you're poor and maintain a residence also.

The worse President ever in a pantheon of not so impressive recent Presidents, Trump has demeaned the office and the US place in the world while maintaining the war machine at full capacity. I suppose many that voted for him are experiencing buyer's remorse, but some dumb clucks continue to cheer at him for everything he does even while he is cutting their own throats. When he's done screwing the American public, 41 million Americans living in poverty will seem like a bygone Golden Age. There will probably be100 million living in poverty then.

The streets of LA are filling up with homeless. Ditto for the streets of San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. The midwest rust belt is getting even rustier. But Professor Philip Alston, an Australian academic with a formal title: UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who conducted the study did find one ray of hope at Saint Boniface Catholic church in San Francisco:

About 70 homeless people were quietly sleeping in pews at the back of the church, as they are allowed to do every weekday morning, with worshipers praying harmoniously in front of them. The church welcomes them in as part of the Catholic concept of extending the helping hand.

“I found the church surprisingly uplifting,” Alston said. “It was such a simple scene and such an obvious idea. It struck me – Christianity, what the hell is it about if it’s not this?”

It was a rare drop of altruism on the west coast, competing against a sea of hostility. More than 500 anti-homeless laws have been passed in Californian cities in recent years. At a federal level, Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who Donald Trump appointed US housing secretary, is decimating government spending on affordable housing.

Perhaps the most telling detail: apart from St Boniface and its sister church, no other place of worship in San Francisco welcomes homeless people. In fact, many have begun, even at this season of goodwill, to lock their doors to all comers simply so as to exclude homeless people.

For most Americans Christmas is a glut of consumerism. A season for helping the poor get out of their miserable circumstances? Why that would go against the American grain of just desserts - getting what you deserve, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Treating the homeless as Prodigal sons which were taken in by their fathers when they came back home, which is what Jesus preached, is foreign to the American spirit. It's giving people something they don't deserve. If Christianity has any meaning or substance left in it whatsoever, the homeless should be treated by society as wayward prodigal sons and given whatever it takes to get them back on the straight and narrow road. Otherwise, America is well on the road to becoming a society of misfits - both rich and poor.

RELATED

How universities, banks and the government turned student debt into America's next financial black hole

While the entire Republican Party was running sideways away from his cratering campaign, Trump was scrambling to find a way back in the race. One of his strategies – and I remember watching this on the trail – was to tack back to the populist themes he'd used to great effect in the Republican primaries.

In Columbus, with Hillary Clinton running away with the election, Trump unveiled what even TheWashington Postdescribed as a "pretty radical student debt plan." The basic idea was income-based repayment capped at 12.5 percent, then total loan forgiveness after 15 years of payments.

"Students should not be asked to pay more on the debt than they can afford," Trump said. "And the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives."

Trump hasn't gone back on that proposal, not exactly, anyway. The 12.5 percent-times-15-years concept was indeed part of a plan he submitted this past summer, at least for undergraduates.

But that same plan proposed a wipeout of five other existing income-based repayment plans, and grad students would be pushed into a harsher program requiring payments for 30 years.

Moving forward, Trump and the Republican Party have all but buried the campaign-trail "fairly radical" plan under a series of other student-bashing decisions.

On Monday, Fortune reported that Department of Education head Betsy DeVos is seeking to end a program to cancel the debt of students defrauded by ripoff diploma-mill universities.

This came just as the inspector general of the Department of Education issued a blistering report showing that DeVos had already essentially stopped processing such claims under the existing program.

Trump, pictured in October 2016, floated on the campaign trail what was described at the time as a "pretty radical student debt plan."AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

The IG report shows that the Trump administration has received 25,991 such claims since Inauguration Day, and approved exactly none of them.

None of this is a surprise. After all, Donald Trump himself ran one of the more notorious higher-education scams, settling a lawsuit for $25 million last year. And DeVos has spent much of her tenure walking back Obama-era initiatives to rein in diploma-mill scams.

The latest DeVos move comes in sync with a nasty piece of legislation introduced by House Republicans this month. Billed as a measure to "simplify" the student loan system, HR 4508, a.k.a. the PROSPER Act, would repeal and prevent the re-adoption of the "Borrower Defense" program that DeVos has already stalled.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders conducts the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC. Sanders said on Tuesday that "only if your mind is in the gutter" could you interpret the president's words as sexual innuendo. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Following fallout and outrage by numerous Democrats and the general public on Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to a question about the "sexual innuendo" contained in a tweet sent by President Donald Trump about Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) by saying that "only if your mind is in the gutter" could someone interpret the president's words in that way.

Watch:

Sarah Sanders says Trump's Gillibrand tweet does not include a sexual innuendo: "Only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way" https://t.co/EQrFrtK75t

Huckabee Sanders was asked about the president's words multiple times by reporters, but she claimed the president did not owe Gillibrand an apology and said "there's no way that [his words were] sexist at all."

But when it came to the press secretary's outlandish explanation, Twitter didn't miss a beat:

"Only if your mind is in the gutter," Sarah Sanders says of those who thought POTUS was suggesting something salacious by saying Gillibrand "would do anything" for campaign contributions.

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Frank Thomas' comment as it appeared on the Common Dreams website:

In concert with being a narcissistic-psychopath, Trump is the archetypal example of the philosophical idea, called solipsism. The solipsist can attach little, and often no meaning to the supposition that there could be thought, experiences, emotions other than his own. The idea is sometimes expressed as the view, “I am the only mind that exists.”

Along with his pathetic egomaniacal trait,Trump LACKS some essential leadership qualities underlying why he fails miserably and morally, namely :his inability to convince others than just his ‘mind-closed’ supporters; his inability to unite people; his inability to touch feelings and move people emotionally; his inability to give solid reasons for particular actions, and, therefore to move people intellectually.

Trump’s solipsistic temperament makes him ‘stone dumb’ to how hugely sensitive the Arab world is, as well as Israel and Palestine, on the issue of Israel’s claims to sovereignty over the entire city. When one adds fact Trump has no coherent peace process strategy that does not favor Israel’s needs over Palestine’s needs, I think hopes for any peaceful solution will stay derailed and descend into the ‘steady state’ violent chaos of past decades.

Trump’s solipsistic temperament of being the ‘all-knowing one’ makes him ‘stone dumb’ to the science of human-induced climate change; ‘stone dumb’ to his recklessly immoral, political support of a pedifile with a ‘crackpot’ position on homosexuality - despite his daughter’s statement there’s a special place in Hell for such people; 'stone dumb’ to his administration’s Tax Plan which is just another inoculation to our country’s obscene income/wealth Gap while accelerating federal deficit helped by reducing current corporate statutory 35% tax rate - which is in reality a 28%“effective”tax rateNETof all current tax goodies - to a new corporate statutory tax rate of 20%! BUT, the new 20% rate still includes most of the current tax goodies that bring the current 35% corporate statutory rate down to an “effective”28% rate. This, among other elements of the Tax Plan, will likely contribute significantly to a record-breaking overall increase in the federal deficit far exceeding forecast $1 trillion based on 0.8% increase in GDP over next decade.

Trump misses the essential qualities in good leaders that save leadership from demagoguery and dictatorship; that set apart the true leader from the false prophet, from the self-serving, from the self-righteous, beguiling manipulator. BUT, his base - Republicans in the Senate and House - sticks with him.

Along with the majority of Americans, I hope that will change before Trump does more damage to the country and world. But the following fitting words in simple English of a fellow writing colleague are right on:

“No matter what happens, Trump always comes out and says words to the effect that everything is wonderful, and he has been doing a good job, and everything will be just fine because of him. That’s his MO. He’ll never own up to anything except for the fact that he is great, and everything is going his way. He might even get away with it because he has the Republican Congress and Supreme Court backing him.”

Well, to end on an optimistic note, things might change for the best for ALL Americans if Jones’ sensational win in Alabama of a seat in the U.S. Senate is duplicated by other qualified Democrat candidates in the 2018 elections!

President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on May 23, 2017. (Photo: U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv/flickr/cc)

With his usual braggadocio and familiar hypocrisy, President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that his official announcement for the U.S. to recognize unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move its embassy there was a gesture of a "peace," while critics at home and across the world decried the move as a destructive and unjust decision that will unleash more violence.

The announcement, said Raed Jarrar, Amnesty International USA's Middle East advocacy director, is both "reckless and provocative." Trump's decision, he said, shows "yet again his blatant disregard for international law" and "further undermines the human rights of the Palestinian people and is likely to inflame tensions across the region."

Trump announces Jerusalem the capital of Israel while saying he is committed to helping achieve peace. These are completely incompatible

"No country in the world recognizes Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, making the decision to confer U.S. recognition deeply troubling" Jarrar added.

International law sees East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory, and no other country has an embassy in Jerusalem. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed that having Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Palestine was necessary to secure a two-state solution.

December 04, 2017

Republicans say the tax bill they've just passed will create economic growth. By giving corporations and the wealthy huge tax reductions, this will stimulate the economy. GDP will surge. However, all economic growth in the last few years has redounded to the benefit of ... you guessed it ... the corporations and the wealthy. 95% Of Income Gains Since 2009 Went To The Top 1%. So why should the middle class and the poor buy this Republican drivel that giving tax breaks to the rich is going to be good for them. They shouldn't.

The Republican tax plan phases out tax breaks for the middle class while keeping in place tax breaks for the rich. Plus it gets rid of social programs that benefit the poor and middle class. But I guess this is what the Trump supporters really want - tax "reform" that screws them. As long as it screws the poor, people of color and immigrants more. Besides corporate CEOs have flat out said that they would not use the tax breaks to create jobs for the middle class. Noooo, they will use them to buy back their own stock, thereby giving themselves a raise.

Business Insider said: "But what's the point of GDP growth if it doesn't translate into broadly shared gains in income and living standards?" That's exactly the point, isn't it? What good is economic growth if it doesn't produce more jobs? And if it doesn't produce more jobs, it won't benefit the middle class or the poor. It will only benefit the rich. So they get a two-fer: tax breaks plus higher income.

The Guardian said: "The economic case for maintaining a progressive income tax structure and targeting welfare payments to those most in need is overwhelming." That's because the poor and middle class will buy more stuff if they have the wherewithal to do so. But the rich don't really care whether the middle class and poor buy more of the kinds of stuff that they usually buy. The rich deal in asset classes and growth in the financial sector of the economy. They don't care if the middle class upgrades from hamburger to steak. It's not the kind of business most of them are in.

The rich only care about economic growth in the financialized debt based economy, that is socking it to the middle class and making them pay more interest on their student, credit card and mortgage loans. They care about economic growth in the asset classes like the stock market and real estate. Economic growth in the retail sector is so passe.

So all you Trump Republicans who just want a win for tax reform are only winning it in such a way that you will never see any of the gains. Losers!

November 27, 2017

One of the most dangerous consequences of this awful period in American life is the denigration of the truth, and of institutions and people who tell it.

There are two kinds of liars – fools and knaves. Fools lie because they don’t know the truth. Knaves lie because they intend to mislead.

Trump is both, because he doesn’t even care enough about the truth to find out what it is. He’ll say whatever he thinks will get people to believe what he wants them to believe.

What about people like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s point person on the Republican tax bills now making their way through Congress?

Mnuchin continues to insist that the legislation puts a higher tax burden on people earning more than $1 million a year, and reduce taxes on everyone else. “I can tell you that virtually everybody in the middle class will get a tax cut, and will get a significant tax cut,” Mnuchin says repeatedly.

But the prestigious Tax Policy Center concludes that by 2025, almost all of the benefits of both bills will have gone to the richest 1 percent, while upper-middle-class payers will pay higher taxes and those at the lower levels will receive only modest benefits.

So is Mnuchin a fool? His career before he became Treasury Secretary doesn’t suggest so. He graduated from Yale, and worked for seventeen years for investment bank Goldman Sachs.

November 14, 2017

First Trump took the US out of the Paris climate agreement. Now he's taking the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12 nation agreement that now the other 11 nations will pursue without US involvement, just as the other nations of the world will pursue the Paris climate agreement without US involvement. The US is the only nation in the world not to be a member of the Paris agreement. So the US is effectively ceding world leadership to China.

President Xi of China has an ambitious plan - the Belt and Road initiative - that will link the Eurasian and African land masses together for the purposes of economic development and trade. While Trump's America Firstism will only make the US a backwater in retreat from engagement with the rest of the world, Xi is an active globalist, placing the world's second largest economy on the road to world leadership. While the US has the world's largest military-industrial complex and seeks to dominate and intimidate the rest of the world by force of arms, China is setting out on a peaceful course of world infrastructure development, something the US cannot even accomplish in the US.

World leadership will eventually go to China based on peaceful development and cooperation with the world's largest contiguous land mass while the US seeks to dominate by means of its military prowess. Economic development will trump military force, something more promising in the long run for a peaceful, cooperative planet. The US will be left to dominate in its sphere of influence - North and South America. China is ceding the US that. However, the US dollar will no longer be the world's reserve currency. That means that the US will no longer be in the position of putting America First. America will not be in a position to demand top priority.

Under Trump America has already become the laughing stock of the world. World leaders have lost their respect for a country that could have elected such a buffoon. The West under US leadership has completely unhinged the Middle East unleashing terrorism under groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIL and al Shebaab that didn't exist before George W Bush's lies that led to the Iraq invasion. Obama and Hillary didn't help the situation any - in fact they made it worse - by their encouragement of the Arab Spring and their take down of Gaddafi. As a result you have the complete destabilization of the Middle East and the European refugee crisis. The US has accomplished only negative results with its foreign policy since 9/11.